


Umbrella Shotgun

by Stratisphyre



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: (if you read between the lines), Alternate Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix it for Kingsman but Wreck it for Statesman, Fix-It of Sorts, Kingsman: The Golden Circle Spoilers, Multi, POV Multiple, Roxy Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 22:41:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stratisphyre/pseuds/Stratisphyre
Summary: Less than forty-eight hours after the total destruction of Statesman, Agent Tequila, Ginger Ale, and a reluctant lepidopterist find themselves in a tailor shop in Savile Row.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I feel as though I am late to the Kingsman fandom party, but at least I come with snacks. 
> 
> You know, I didn't hate Golden Circle, but then this plotbunny happened, and it grew and 20k words later here we are.

It was a damn shame that Ginger Ale managed to catch up with him before he got his poor ass out the door that afternoon. He was tempted—very, very tempted—to ignore her calling for him. When she first shouted ‘Tequila’ at the top of her lungs, she was all the way at the other end of the hall, and he could easily have gotten to the elevator, claiming whatever combination of deafness and ignorance that’d get him out of whatever she wanted before she caught up with him. Unfortunately, he’d already used that gambit once before, and really you only ever got one before people caught on. 

He reluctantly turned around, and cursed when he saw Butterfly Guy heeling behind her. 

He glanced longingly at the elevator. He’d almost made it. Damn.

“Hey, Ginger,” he greeted with every meagre amount of cheer he could conjure up at the tail end of a lengthy mission debrief. Champ hadn’t seen fit to cut him any slack, either; the entire past three weeks of his life had been analyzed to the smallest detail, and all he’d gotten in reply was a gruff acknowledgement that at least he’d managed to put together a coherent report. “I was just on my way out.” 

“Sure you were. To get your truck and take Mr. Hart and I to the clinic for his appointment.” 

Jason clenched his jaw. Really? “I sort of had plans for this afternoon, Ging.” 

“Were those plans to smoke a joint and make passes at whatever pretty blondes happen to be nearby?” 

Well, not _a_ joint. “No.” 

From the unimpressed rise of her eyebrow, that sounded about as unconvincing to her as it had to him. “The protocol for the lepidopterist is that an agent must accompany all excursions in case of attempted retrieval.” ‘Or escape’ went unsaid… they’d really tried to make sure Butterfly Guy didn’t believe he was a prisoner, for all he was essentially imprisoned. As far as he was concerned, he was on an extended ‘retreat’ at a mental care facility; one where the nurses just happen to keep guns at their hips in case of emergencies. Jason doubted he bought it hook, line and sinker, but he seemed content enough to play along. “You’re on the docket. You’ll have to wait on the extracurriculars.” 

Spoken like someone who hadn’t dropped a decent chunk of change on some Master Rockstar kush after almost a month’s worth of abstinence. Double dammit. From the look in her eyes, there wasn’t any getting out of it, either. 

Ginger Ale’s personal interest in Butterfly Guy mostly came from whatever guilt she felt at being unable to kick-start his brain properly, from way back when they first found him bleeding out in the church parking lot. Personally, Jason thought BG was lucky to be alive at all, let alone set up the way he was in HQ, but all he needed to do was take a look at the guy’s sad little room before feeling like a douche for thinking that ‘lucky’ was the word for it. 

Nominally, they knew BG’s name. Well, at least, they knew what he remembered his name being. Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart III. (“You may call me Harry.”) Now, they’d looked up Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart III, and there weren’t no such person in the entirety of the world, from what they could tell. They’d also looked up Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart II and Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart I. The last one existed about a hundred years ago as some minor baron of something, but the idea that they have a member of the British nobility locked away underground in a padded cell hadn’t sat right with anyone, so they’d sort of glossed over it and pretended that they weren’t related. Statesman as an agency was pretty damn good at feigning ignorance. 

(“You know,” Ginger had told him one night, after he’d slipped into her office with a bottle of Reserve batch and a couple of glasses, high on himself and his success over a recent assignment in Ottawa, “I did find something on him a couple of days after V-Day, but when I tried to pull his records someone started tracking my signal. I lost them in my proxies, but I think that was just because they must’ve been distracted… they would’ve found me, otherwise. I haven’t really tried again since.”)

Because ‘You may call me Harry’ had always seemed way too familiar to Jason when the guy might’ve been playing them for fools, Jason typically referred to him as BG and left it at that. They knew he was intelligence, but since nothing had come up on the friendlier channels Champ kept an eye on, they were essentially stuck with him until something like a solid lead turned up.

BG didn’t leave HQ very often; for the first little while, he had some physio therapy to help him get over the injuries he’d acquired when he’d been involved in the utter shit-kicking debacle in the church—the extent of which they could only speculate on, since he was the only one who’d managed to step out the church’s front door, despite stepping into a bullet—and now they took him to see some sort of occupational therapist once a month or so, because Ging was holding onto the hope that something would trigger his memories. As far as BG was concerned, they’re working towards reintegrating him into society; Champ actually mandated it to make sure the guy wasn’t really some sort of deep-cover sleeper planning to murder them all in a moment of distraction. 

No murder yet. Not unless Jason tried to weasel out of riding point for his appointment, anyway. 

He huffed out a sigh and gestured for Ging to lead them out. It was bullshit, but protocol was protocol, and Jason wasn’t going to sit through that lecture again. 

The therapist was in the next town over, situated in one of those fancy walk-in clinics with posters all over the walls advertising medication. BG was quiet on the drive over, head stuck in a book as per usual. He was generally a pretty quiet guy, unless you got him started on what Ging laughingly referred to as hot topics in Lepidoptera. Jason could tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth, now, but that was about as far as his general knowledge went, to the despair of BG, who’d offered up far and beyond more trivia about morpho wazzits. The pretty blue ones. 

“We could stop at the bookstore on the way back, if you’d like,” Ging offered as they pulled into the parking lot. If they’d let him, his cell would be about two feet shallower from all the books he’d acquired over the past year, most of which they let him keep in a small room off Ging’s lab. He didn’t have free reign of HQ, or anything, but everyone was rostered to check in on him every so often to make sure he had everything he needed to stay comfortable.

“Oh, splendid,” BG replied with a wan smile. Jason never did quite understand the meaning of the word ‘wan’ until he started spending time around BG and saw his anemic offerings of cheer. The guy seemed in a permanent state of quiet melancholy; then again, if Jason were locked in a padded cell like that, he probably wouldn’t be much better off. Jason kept anticipating some sort of break out attempt; agents the calibre of which he imagined BG to be didn’t just drop off the face of the planet without someone trying to either kill them or extract them. But nothing’d happened in the year since he came into their custody, and Jason was slowly getting over his gut feeling that the other shoe was about to drop.

They reached the clinic with about twenty minutes to spare. Jason dutifully followed Ging and BG out of the truck, but paused when the feed from his glasses chimed, and a disgruntled-looking Champ appeared in his feed. 

“Tequila, you heard from Bourbon today?” 

Jason frowned. “No, sir. I thought she was still on assignment in Stockholm.” 

“She is. She was supposed to report in this morning.” Champ took a sip from his glass, swished it around his mouth and then spit it out with a grimace. “I don’t much like it when our people go incommunicado.” 

“Me either, sir,” Jason replied tightly. Especially not Bourbon. She might’ve been twenty years his senior, and treated him like some precious little duck that happened to waddle into Statesman HQ, but she was also one of the few agents, including Champ, who seemed willing to forget that Jason was recruited from the rodeo circuit instead of special ops like most of the other agents. She’d recruited him herself, saw something in him besides grease paint and bright colours. 

He waved Ging and BG ahead and slipped back into the cab of his truck, tuning his glasses feed into the table. Most of the others had already logged in, all of them shaking their heads and looking mystified by Bourbon’s radio silence. Because Bourbon never missed a trick; she’d once attended an optional budgeting meeting while in the middle of a firefight with a group of militant insurgents. It made something uneasy and ugly begin churning his gut. 

“Anyone checked the ladies’ room?” Whiskey asked with a hearty laugh. 

Before Jason could call him out on his bullshit, Whiskey’s feed zapped out. 

“Whiskey?” Champ said with a frown. 

Around the table, one-by-one, everyone began shorting out. Champ was up and out of his seat, cursing, when suddenly something must’ve caught his eye out the window. 

“Fuck me.” 

And then Champ’s signal disappeared, too, and all of a sudden Jason’s glasses went completely black. That’d never happened before. That it happened at all meant that their servers had all been destroyed. Even their backups in New York.

He tore them off his face and jumped out of the cab, already calling for Ging.

* * *

HQ was a fucking crater. 

Jason stared at the smouldering remains, his chest a tight bundle of nothingness and cold dread. The explosion had attracted the local firefighters, but there wasn’t much more they could do than stare at the hole where the distillery had been and speculate about what had happened. There was a tour group in from Frankfort, who were all pressed up against the windows of their tour bus while the driver tried to fight through the crowd of locals who’d all shown up to gawk and point. 

It was funny how his brain fixated on little things. Not that Champ was gone—really, the only father Jason had ever had, for all he’d hated him for it these past five years—but that they’d lost sixty-four barrels of 1988 special reserve. Not that all his worldly possessions were gone, but that he’d never gotten a chance to try out the new weed he’d had tucked under his mattress. Not that the other agents were dead—Ginger had tried to log back into their shared channels, on the drive back, but no one had responded, even those deployed on assignments which’d kept them away from HQ—but that Ging was practically hyperventilating and threatening to draw way too much attention their way. 

When she spoke, her voice was completely steady, though her breathing was all hitched up in her chest. “Tequila, we need to go.” 

“Where?” Jason demanded. 

“There are procedures in place for this type of situation,” she told him.

“This type of situation?” Jason repeated. “Everyone’s dead, Ging.” He said it a bit too loud, and eyes began turning their way. 

Ging clapped a hand on his arm. “Come on.” 

BG, behind her, was still staring nonplussed at the hole in the ground, brow drawn into lines of deep thought. “I suppose this will set back my recovery.” Jason had never really been convinced that BG bought into the whole psychiatric care thing; from the look on BG’s face, apparently he’d been right. He must’ve seen something terrible in Jason’s eyes, because rather than bitch about things, he trailed silently behind them, back to the truck, and tucked himself mutely into the back bench.

“What do we do?” Jason asked when Ging settled herself into the seat beside him. He needed direction. Something to do with his hands. Anything to stop his gaze from circling back and back again to where his life had been. 

“We go shopping,” she replied evenly. 

Frankfort had its fair share of strip malls and department stores; they skipped past all of them. Instead, they headed to the smallest, most hole-in-the-wall dry cleaner Jason had ever seen in his entire life. He looked at Ging sidelong, his skepticism probably written all over his face, but she nudged his side and slipped out of the car. 

BG caught his eyes in the rear-view mirror. “I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish. Surely we should be back at the site of the accident to provide information on the building’s safety measures.” 

Jason dropped his head against his steering wheel, banging it a couple of times until his scrambled thoughts fell into something like order. Ging knew what to do; she always did. 

“Come on.” 

BG gamely followed him out of the car, though he was still looking at Jason like he was an idiot and this entire situation was absolutely ludicrous. Couldn’t really blame him, though. 

Inside, Ging was already at the counter, waiting on the tall septuagenarian-looking GQ motherfucker who was wandering in and out of the rows upon rows of bagged clothing. 

“Excuse me,” she said, craning her neck and trying to get his attention. 

He barely spared her a glance. “Yes?” British. It figured. 

“We’re from Statesman. We’d like to use your second fitting room, please.” 

At this, he finally looked her way. “By all means.” He waved them into the depths of the store. The scent of heavy-duty cleaning products and wafts of hot air made it hard for Jason to catch his breath, but he muscled on, taking up the rear to watch their backs as Ging followed their host to the very back of the store. He waved them into a tight little room with a floor-length three-fold mirror. 

“Thank you,” Ging said. She gestured BG and Jason in behind her. 

“I’m beginning to have the feeling that I am missing some rather substantial information,” BG said as soon as the door closed behind them.

“Harry…” Ging began. She paused. “I think you saw enough of our operations to guess that there was always more to the story than we were letting on.” 

She left BG to puzzle over that as she inspected the room. Grabbing one side of the mirror, she pulled at it to reveal a wall safe behind it. “There we go.” She studied it for a moment before setting herself to the task of spinning the dial.

“You know the combination?” Jason asked. 

“06-18-70,” Ging replied. “June 1870. The foundation of Statesman.” She stepped back and grabbed the lever. “I hope.” 

She gave it a tug and the safe clicked open. Jason braced himself. For what, he wasn’t sure. For Champ’s booming laugh to tell him that he’d passed whatever bullshit drill this was, or his glasses to reactivate and for the rest of the agents to laugh at him for believing that they could all be so easily wiped out. A miracle, he supposed.

Ging pulled out am umbrella. 

“Oh, what the fuck, Ging,” Jason said. He turned and hammered his fist into the wall. “That’s it?!” He felt his entire face twist up in a hard frown as she studied the logo on the umbrella. “Everyone’s fucking dead. Everyone. We need to start figuring out what the fuck we need to do next.” 

“We know what to do next,” she said. She turned and shoved the umbrella into Jason’s face. “Look. _Kingsman_. It’s the same logo that was on Harry’s glasses when we found him.” They both cast a look BG’s way, but he was looking as mystified as they were. Not much help there, then, unless he was playing deliberately helpless to get them off their guard. Wasn’t gonna work; Jason’s hadn’t ever been as on guard as he was feeling right now. “And here.” She pointed to Statesman’s stylized ‘S’, planted right in the middle of the word ‘Kingsman’ scrawled across the handle. 

“So what do we do with it?” 

Ging stared at the umbrella a moment before meeting his eyes. “We go to London.”

* * *

Jason had never understood it when tourists to the distillery complained about flying. He hadn’t stepped foot on a plane prior to joining Statesman, though, and the first time he’d flown had been on their private jet, with all the comforts of a small condo in Manhattan. Squeezing into economy seating for eleven hours, squished between Ging in the aisle seat and BG staring out the window, his knees jammed into the back of the seat in front of him, he was beginning to get it. 

Ging had set him up with an air marshal ID, at least, so he’d been able to get his guns on board, with a couple more checked through in the baggage that held everything they’d managed to scrounge up from the few Statesman safehouses that remained. Limited tech, though Ging could work magic with just a tablet, and an armoury of which even BG had seemed unimpressed. Hitting any of the safehouses up had been a risk; even with Ging’s single-minded dedication to finding out, there weren’t any clues about who’d hit them, and if they were being monitored for stragglers. But there was no way Jason was going anywhere without enough firepower to keep himself and Ging alive. 

After a bumpy landing at Heathrow, he armed himself with everything they had before they’d even cleared customs.

Their official-looking IDs and Ging’s magic with a computer got them through the doors unharassed, and they hailed a cab. Not all the way to Savile Row, but close enough that they could get the lay of the land before walking into whatever shitshow that might be awaiting them. 

They were barely out the door of the cab when Ging said quietly, into the space between them, “I think we're being followed.”

Jason didn't turn around to check. Didn't even acknowledge Ging beyond the slightest tilt of his chin. He'd marked the same couple of assholes a block or two back; the ones following their car just a bit too close for comfort, and had all tumbled out as soon as they could, and were now determined to pause and examine the storefront of whatever happened to be nearby whenever Jason looked over his shoulder. Ging had good instincts... they probably should've ignored Whiskey and made her an agent last time the Rye designation had come up.

BG looked about to turn around and Jason clamped a hand to his shoulder, squeezing tight and keeping him aimed straight ahead.

“Where'd you say this place was?” Jason demanded.

“Savile Row. Another block or two North.”

Jason imperceptibly quickened his pace, and Ging more than kept up.

When they found it, the shop almost indistinguishable from all the other pretentious bullshit on either side, Jason cast a skeptical look Ging's way.

“Really?” he muttered.

“Really,” she replied.

BG just frowned. “Not terribly comforting, is it?”

“No, sir,” Jason replied. “It is not.”

The assholes behind them had been joined by four more. Hopefully, if this place wasn't more than a glorified H&M, they'd at least have a back door.

He led Ging and BG up the steps, frowning when he noticed the plate next to the door pit their establishment date before Statesman’s, and then opened the door for Ging and BG to step inside. He looked at the gathered assholes behind them—eight now, all armed and hiding it poorly under bulky clothes and loose pants—and slipped inside.

The man behind the counter was staring at BG like he'd seen a ghost. That, at least, was a promising start.

“I say, Mr. Hart.” He glanced at Jason and Ging. “Are you experiencing problems with your brogues?”

BG looked down at his slip-ons. “Whyever would you ask about my shoes?”

The man reached under the counter, and Jason whipped out his revolver.

“Hold it right there,” he ordered. The man instantly stuck his hands towards the ceiling. “Look, we got us a whole lotta ugly heading our way, and we need to know if this isn't more than a fancy store for assholes lookin’ to buy menswear, get me?”

“Please,” Ging added. She held up the umbrella. “We have this.”

The man, wide-eyed, regarded the pair of them like they were the crazy ones. The last vestiges of hope, the little fluttering in his stomach that had stubbornly insisted that they were going to find something to help them, fizzled and died in his stomach. Fuck. This was nothing. A dead end. 

And then two things happened all at once:

The door to one of the fitting rooms opened, revealing a sweet little scrap of a thing about half Jason's size, a familiar-looking umbrella tucked on her forearm, murder in her eyes.

The front door burst open, and all eight assholes poured in.

Time seemed to freeze as the bastards—weapons no longer hidden, but held at about eye-level—froze and took in Jason, Jason's gun, Umbrella Lady and the increasingly panicked looking dude behind the counter.

“Do you have an appointment?” Umbrella Lady asked calmly.

One of them swung on her and opened fire. Her umbrella opened with a flick of her wrist, deflecting the bullet and sending it spinning into the nearby wall sconce.

Havoc ensued.

* * *

Mo was not used to being in the middle of a fight. 

Watching, yes. Absolutely. Watching was 100% of her job. 

Dodging around shivs and avoiding gunfire? Not once in all the years she’d been with Statesman. 

_She loved it_. 

Tequila had managed to knock out one of the men already; he was unconscious on the floor, bleeding though a sizable gash in his head onto the luxurious-looking carpet. Another was knocked out from a tazer-like hit from the unknown agent’s umbrella, which had sent him spinning into the apparently bullet-proof front window, which had remained completely undented by the audible crack of his skull connecting with the pane. 

Before Tequila had decided to go toe-to-toe with the biggest of their assailants, Mo had grabbed Harry by the scruff of the neck and shoved him behind the counter, where the shopkeeper had ducked down and was currently hiding under what appeared to be a well-shielded alcove. She patted his arm and stood up, only to immediately duck as an actual meat cleaver flew through the air and stuck itself into the wood paneling behind the counter. She looked at it, looked back at the man who’d thrown it, and ripped it out of the wall. 

Champ had always asked, with far more amusement than she’d really felt to be appropriate, why she kept up her weapon proficiencies. Each time, she’d reminded him that she’d wanted out into the field. Craved it. Needed it like breathing. And each time he’d shaken his head and muttered that it’d be a cold day in hell before she got the unanimous quorum she needed in order to make it a reality. (‘Yer too important behind that desk, Ging.’ ‘We need you right where you are.’ ‘Do you know how geddemm hard it’d be to replace you?’) And yet. She never failed to attend training when it was offered. Kept herself abreast of new weapon technologies. Practiced with every piece of hardware in their armoury.

There was something almost sinfully satisfying about whipping a meat cleaver at a man’s head. 

He ducked, but it managed to nick his ear. When he cursed, grabbing for the place where the tip of his ear had been, Mo jumped towards him and kicked him in the same place. He hollered, and brought his gun up towards her. Mo hammered her palm into his elbow and grabbed his gun away when it bent outwards, then put two bullets in his chest before he could recover. 

Across the room, Tequila had managed to subdue the largest of the man, only to have another grab him from behind. They swung around, each trying to get purchase over the other, until Tequila’s boot slipped on a particularly well polished piece of hardwood and he sprawled out over the counter. A knife flew into his opponent’s hand and stabbed downwards, stopping perilously close to his eye and held back only by the strength in Tequila’s biceps and his stubborn refusal to let anyone get a leg up over him. 

Mo was in the exact wrong position to shoot the man holding him, without potentially sticking Tequila with a through-and-through, and instead turned her attention to another one of the idiots headed her way. She fired three bullets; two found purchase in his kneecaps, and the third stopped his screaming about it. 

One of the last remaining goons had a semi-automatic in hand, preparing to spray the shop. Before he could so much as get a round off, the other female agent swung her umbrella up, and neatly hooked it through the trigger guard of the man's gun. With a flick of her wrist, she whipped it out of his fingers and sent it flying in the direction of the front door. 

The gun was effortlessly snagged out of the air by a blond man in a bespoke suit, who, with his relaxed posture and quizzical lift to his brow, looked more as though he'd walked in on someone using the wrong fork at dinner than a bullet-riddled brawl. He dismantled the gun in seconds and dropped the pieces to the floor. The gun’s owner stared at him, shocked, for only a moment before the newcomer’s colleague reminded him of her presence with a quick blow to the side of his head with her umbrella and an effortless leg sweep that brought him to the ground. She knocked him out with a solid kick to his temple.

“Galahad,” she said in greeting, barely winded.

“Lancelot.” He surveyed the scene: the handful of men remaining, Tequila pressed back over the counter with a knife bare inches from his retina, Mo herself and the gun held firmly in her hands. “Spot of trouble?”

“Not at all,” the agent—Lancelot?—assured him. “But thank you for coming.”

One of the last men flew at Galahad. He brought up his own umbrella, twisted it in the v of the man's outstretched arms and used his own momentum to throw him bodily out of the shop.

“My pleasure, most assuredly.” The sound of screeching tires filled the room. Galahad glanced over his shoulder. “Seems they've decided to retreat.”

Tequila finally got his hands on something from the counter—a finely crafted fountain pen, which he flipped the cap off with his thumbnail and a grunt—and stabbed it into his attacker's ear. The goon howled and stumbled away, right into Lancelot’s fist. He hit the ground, boneless as the rest.

“Would you like the pleasure?” Galahad asked, gesturing over his shoulder. 

“A gentleman never leaves their guests unattended,” Lancelot replied, looking pointedly at Mo and Tequila. “After you.”

“Brilliant.” His posh, upper class accent slipped away for just a moment, and he caught Tequila’s eye, offering the most salacious wink Mo had ever seen outside a romantic comedy. Tequila straightened, obviously ready to raise hell if they tried to detain him. “Coming, bruv?”

Tequila kicked one of the guns up off the floor and into his hand. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

They disappeared into the night. 

Once they were gone, Lancelot’s gaze seemed to temporarily lose focus in a very recognizable way. She scanned the bodies on the floor in a thorough grid pattern, logging every available detail for whoever was monitoring her feed. “Seven, Merlin. One more outside, unless he escaped. Yes. Galahad is in pursuit.” Lancelot turned her full attention on Mo, a gun appearing in her hand as if by magic. “Two unknowns.”

Mo threw up her hands. She realized she was still holding a gun and dropped it, kicking it Lancelot’s way. “We're from Statesman. In America? Our organization was all but wiped out, and our doomsday protocols brought us here.”

Before Lancelot could do more than narrow her eyes, Harry stood from where he'd taken refuge behind the counter.

“Is it over?” he asked, his tone all at once concerned and plaintive.

Lancelot gun hand tremored. “Agent Galahad?” Harry looked back at her, blank, as what sounded like a great deal of incomprehensible screaming filtered through her glasses, loud enough that Mo could make out a Scottish accent. 

“I'm sorry, have we had the pleasure?” Harry questioned.

Lancelot frowned, but lowered her gun. “Eggsy is going to go mental.”

Harry’s forehead knit in confusion. “What on earth is an eggsy?”

* * *

“I’ve gotta say,” the yank told him, hanging out the window with his gun trained at the car weaving in and out of traffic in front of them. “I’ve never rode shotgun on the left-hand side, before.” 

“You’re doing all right,” Eggsy assured him. He ran a red, spinning the steering wheel and narrowly drifting through the space between two cars crossing the intersection. When he’d motioned for the bloke to come along, it’d primarily been to make sure Roxy wasn’t outnumbered; she’d kill him if he ever admitted it. But there was a difference between whatever poorly trained hired help she’d been dealing with when he’d first arrived and obviously competent intelligence agents. He wasn’t taking any chances with Roxy’s life. 

He straightened out again and the yank fired another shot at the retreating car. This time he managed to wing one of the wheels, and the car began decelerating, weaving unsteadily on the remaining three tires. 

Eggsy hit the gas and managed to creep close enough to nudge the car’s back left bumper. It spun out, the passenger-side door crashing against a few parking peds and coming to a full halt. Eggsy jumped out his door and slid across the roof of his cab, reaching the car just in time to stop the American from firing both barrels through what remained of the window. 

The driver was dead, neck broken from his collision with the airbag. Across from him, the passenger—the one they’d been pursuing—was groaning, holding his head in his hands. 

Eggsy rounded the car and grabbed him through the open window. With a quick tug, he pulled him through and onto the pavement. As he hit the ground, his collar bunched in Eggy’s hands, revealing a golden circle tattooed into the small of his clavicle.

“You recognize this?” Eggsy asked.

The American shook his head. “No, sir.” 

Eggsy spun his watch around to the right setting and darted the villain; half an hour should do the trick. Let him think he’d gotten away clear before his mate had crashed the car. With barely a pause, he pulled out a needle and stuck it into the fleshy part of his shoulder.

“What’s that?” 

“Tracking device,” Eggsy replied. “It’ll let us monitor his movements, overhear his conversations, everything.” The other man’s face twisted in confusion. “What?”

“Nothing. Just… usually when we plant trackers, it’s more fun.” 

Eggsy picked the man up and shoved him back into the car. 

“We didn’t get a proper introduction,” he said, turning about. He offered his hand. “Agent Galahad, Kingsman.” 

“Agent Tequila. Statesman.” He had a proper handshake. Firm without bullshit. It made Eggsy inclined to think better of him. “My… partner and I, we seem to be in need of your help.”

The sound of sirens in the distance made both of them tilt their heads towards the south, and Eggsy gestured for Tequila to return to the car.

“Right. Well. Let’s get you back to the shoppe.” His attention flicked to the incoming notification from Merlin, establishing a video feed, now that he was out from behind the steering wheel and not trying to focus on keeping them from flipping over. “Go ahead, Merlin.”

“I’m picking up the signal from the tracking device,” Merlin told him. He seemed almost hesitant, which was so out of character for him that Eggy’s hand twitched to his gun, just in case he was about to be ordered to subdue the other agent. He wasn’t labouring under any false assumptions; it’d likely be a fight. “Lancelot and I have cleared them, from what Arthur knows of Statesman. But…” He cursed. “Come right to HQ, lad. Lancelot has already brought out guests along the metro.” 

“Guests?” Eggsy repeated. “I only saw one other agent in the shoppe.” 

“Guests,” Merlin repeated firmly. “Bring your shoe polish.” 

Prepare for the worst. Not a code Merlin used lightly, when he used it at all. Eggsy steadied himself. Merlin would’ve told him if something had happened to Roxy. He could hold onto that to keep himself from losing his fucking mind on the way back to the Kingsman estate.

“Hope you fancy a drive through the country,” he said to Tequila. 

“Don’t see I have much choice,” Tequila said. He flicked the safety back on his gun and tossed it into the backseat before dropping into the passenger’s side.


	2. Chapter 2

Shoe polish, Eggsy decided, didn’t begin to cover it. When they reached HQ, it seemed as though every agent not on active assignment had found some excuse to linger in the hallway between the front door and Arthur’s receiving room. In short order, he passed by Geriant, Bors and Bedivere, all of whom were failing to look anything beyond obvious about their interest in whatever was happening. Once he actually reached the corridor leading to Arthur’s chambers, it was as though his senses had been scraped raw. 

And, of course, Percival was waiting for them. 

The other man didn’t say anything; he’d always been closer to Roxy than Eggsy, which Eggsy couldn’t fault him for. But there was a terrible understanding in his eyes, and he clapped Eggsy’s shoulder in such a way that Eggsy found himself both buoyed and absolutely certain that he was about to open that door and find that someone was dead. 

“Wotcher, Percival?” he asked, looking to goad a reaction. 

“Wotcher, Eggsy,” Percival responded, game in a way he usually wasn’t. He cut a glimpse at Agent Tequila and then tilted his head towards the door. No forewarning, then, though it seemed that every other agent in the entire goddamn building knew something was going on and Merlin couldn’t be arsed to share it over the feed and give Eggsy some fucking clue as to what it might be. 

He opened the door and allowed Tequila to precede him into the room before stepping through himself, his senses all on high alert. Arthur sat in his place, his back uncharacteristically stiff; unlike Chester King, their current Arthur was a decent enough sort, and didn’t tend to buy into the dignity of his station, or whatever. Behind him, Merlin looked all at once ecstatic and grim—and really, only he could pull that sort of elevated severity off with such ease—and Roxy hovered at his side, her eyes flicking up to meet Eggsy’s and back down again. The other American agent had taken Roxy’s seat, a pair of Kingsman-issued glasses on her face.

And beside her…

Beside her…

“Harry?” Eggsy whispered.

Between heartbeats, he crossed the room, arms already open. He tried not to feel utterly crushed when Harry regarded him with cool detachment and stepped back from his embrace. A million doubts bombarded him all at once; Harry had been gone for a year—was he reluctant to say anything in front of the Statesman agents? Or… it couldn’t be that he was still hung up on what they’d said to each other when he’d left for Kentucky. There was no way. Eggsy was a proper Kingsman now; surely him standing in the room showed that he’d proven himself, despite everything?

“Harry, I’m…” What? Sorry? Glad to see him? Sick to his stomach with the sudden knowledge that he’d never been arsed to try and retrieve his corpse? 

Before he could get too caught up in it, Arthur spoke quietly. “He doesn’t remember us, Galahad.” The old man’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Agent Ginger Ale,” he nodded at the bird taking up Roxy’s seat, “Has been familiarizing us with the process they utilized to save his life, and it appears that it’s robbed him of more than thirty years of his memories.”

“Thirty years?” Eggsy repeated faintly. He tried to meet Harry’s eyes, and found the disinterested lack of familiarity he found waiting for him too much to bear.

“Approximately,” Merlin said, low and pained. “Harry has been asking after his mother.”

Eggsy’s insides quailed. From all accounts, Harry hadn’t taken the news well when he’d been informed of his mother’s passing. The occasion had made his fight with Dean’s boys in the Black Prince look like high tea at the Savoy. It might be different, without Harry’s Kingsman training backing him, but Eggsy didn’t want to be the one to deliver the news.

Merlin, he noted when he looked to the other man, wouldn’t meet his eyes. Something else to deal with, then.

Focus on the problem at hand. Agent Tequila had said precious little on the way over, and Eggsy had to content himself with getting the all-too-brief summary of the situation Merlin had provided during the drive, his voice tense. At least now Eggsy knew why.

“Lancelot, please escort Mr. Hart to the medical wing,” Arthur said.

“Thank you, but I’ve had quite enough of hospitals,” Harry interjected. His voice was so achingly familiar. Firm and commanding, even if he didn’t have the authority of Kingsman backing him. “If it’s imprudent for me to be here, I’ll wait in the hallway. But I think I should prefer to remain out from under halogen lights.”

Arthur glanced at Roxy and nodded, and Harry allowed her to guide him out the door without a backwards glance. Eggsy couldn’t help watching his back; the set of his shoulders thinner than he remembered. Harry had never been bulky, but he’d always been fit. It seemed that during his time with the Statesman he’d lost more than the last three decades of his time on earth.

Once Harry was out the door, Eggsy returned his attention to the meeting. And Merlin still wouldn’t look at him. Buggering fuck.

“Has the tracker moved?” he asked, his voice steady. He wasn’t going to allow himself to fall to pieces over this. He couldn’t afford the luxury of it. Not when they’d been assaulted by some unknown force which had apparently completely destroyed their sister intelligence agency in America.

“Yes,” Merlin said, a bare twitch in his left eye. “To a nearby A&E. I’ll continue monitoring it.”

“Meanwhile, I’ve done some research on the tattoo you found,” Roxy said, returning to the room. She came to a stop at Eggsy’s side and tapped her glasses to send her findings to the screen. “It’s the call sign of an organization calling itself The Golden Circle.”

* * *

Harry Hart was a sensible man.

He didn't enjoy the fact that he'd apparently lost significant portion of his life—far more than the ten or fifteen years Ms. Ale had proposed, due to his relative fitness when he'd been found, and hearing that the estimate was closer to double her original estimate deemed to hit her like a punch in the gut—but there didn't seem much help for it. And so, he felt, rather than inconvenience anyone through his bumbling attempts at whatever subterfuge they engaged in professionally, it was probably better to play it as his mother would: very, very carefully.

It seemed an interminable amount of time between when Harry was ushered out into the hallway and deposited upon a stylish yet uncomfortable settee, and when the small meeting inside at last concluded. At the end of the hall, trying—poorly—to stay out of sight, a small collection of men had been taking turns ‘casually’ walking by, heads whipping about to get a glimpse of him as he waited, stiff-backed and hands folded in his lap. He’d seen the same four faces eight different times, which led him to believe they were on some sort of rotation; though who they were and why they saw fit to gawk at him were still lost to the annals of lost time clouding his mind. 

It had been a wholly different experience in the so-called ‘hospital’ in which he had been staying prior to their trip to London. Sitting for hours upon end in the same room, to be alternately observed and fretted over, all the while trying to determine his real identity. It stood out to him rather egregiously, of course: he had nothing to hide. He was, and always had been, Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart III. It rather spoke to his missing years that apparently that person no longer existed. 

He’d taken comfort in his butterflies, and the inalienable facts of their existence. You might find out new information about a particular species and reclassify them as the interpretation of facts adjusted, but a butterfly was still a butterfly. It was an embarrassing transparent coping mechanism, but one he’d taken comfort in nonetheless. 

And now, with the “hospital” (intelligence agency, his mind supplied, as preposterous as it was to think they’d wasted such resources on him) destroyed, he hadn’t even his meagre collection of books and illustrations. 

The door to Arthur’s meeting room finally opened, spilling out ‘Lancelot’ and the young man who’d greeted him with such intimate familiarity that Harry had actually began to wonder whether or not there was some veracity to the claims that he’d known them. ‘Galahad.’ As though intelligence agencies couldn’t contrive of less obviously false monikers. The man was a fit bit of rough, recently polished. Harry’s brain tried to insist that they were practically of age, though his body was insistent that, yes, nearly thirty years had truly passed. 

Galahad’s eyes fixed on Harry immediately. He could see the ghost of his name lurking on the man’s lips, though he bit it back. His eyes were uncomfortably beautiful, and they entreated Harry with a thousand unspoken words. 

Harry stood and bowed stiffly. 

Lancelot wrapped a hand around Galahad’s elbow. His mother would have called the gesture one of the greater sins of attempted subtlety. “We’ll have someone along shortly to escort you to your accommodations, Mr. Hart.” 

“No more fluorescents, I promise,” Galahad stated. It was those small tells that gave him away, despite his brilliant attire and careful diction. Harry’s mother would have picked him out of a crowd in a moment. People brought up in wealth and station didn’t offer platitudes as a means of comfort. Had he truly been anything more than someone pulled up and dressed in the reeds of the privileged, he would have simply nodded his head or, more likely, remained completely aloof. 

It was perhaps these pretentions towards class that Harry despised the most. Growing up in boarding schools, summer houses, trips abroad… he’d had more than enough of his ‘peers’ well before he’d passed his A levels. Having someone pretend to be among them, when Harry found them all to be such empty-headed and useless prats? Ridiculous. Why aspire to be someone so wholly without merit or use?

Harry, for the most part, didn’t hate his birthright. But he did hate most of those who shared it. 

Galahad must have read some of the derision in his eyes, because he shut down properly. His eyes, previously so expressive, shuttered to nothing. Now Harry received the tight-shouldered nod. Now he seemed to belong. Good. It made it easier for Harry to ignore how his heart had leapt when this Galahad had come forward to embrace him. 

They made their way down the hallway, disappearing around a corner decorated with an ostentatious portrait of Elizabeth II, and Harry returned to his place on the settee.

Another few long minutes passed before Ms. Ale, Tequila—of course it hadn’t been a nickname, no wonder the man had laughed at him when Harry asked—and “Merlin” exited Arthur’s rooms. 

“Thank you for everything,” Merlin said, warmly shaking Ms. Ale’s hand. “You’ll both be partnering with Galahad on this, moving forward.” He glanced at Harry. “I’ll get the three of you settled for the evening.” 

The walk through the grand estate brought to mind the casual strolls through his aunt’s home in Hatfield; grander, but poorly decorated. Harry found himself glancing time and time again at the walls, finding small inconsistencies; décor that shouldn’t have been placed where it was, and stood out all the more for it. Passing a Baroque grotesquerie, he paused and eyed the frame. It took a moment to figure out what had drawn his eye, but eventually did note the small imperfection in the frame. 

No, not an imperfection. 

A camera. 

Satisfied, he moved to keep up with Merlin, who’d paused only long enough to quirk a knowing eyebrow in his direction. 

After directing Tequila and Ms. Ale into their own rooms, Merlin swept into a larger suite, gesturing for Harry to follow. Harry opened his mouth to thank him, but Merlin held up a hand, silencing him with an effective slice of his palm through the air, and set himself to work on his tablet. Harry drifted around the room, examining the tasteful antique-style furnishings and moderately less offensive paintings. The accommodations were pleasant. A small kitchenette supplemented the other quaint comforts of the room, and Harry felt an undeniable attraction to the extra-large claw-footed tub in the en suite bath. But for all the luxurious accommodations, he suspected he would not be permitted to leave. 

He glanced back to Merlin, feigning disinterest and poorly hiding his irritation. Surely if these were meant to be private quarters—or as private as could be expected, considering where he was—then the man wouldn't remain as a fixture all evening?

Noticing his scrutiny, Merlin turned his tablet around to face Harry, showing off an indecipherable sweep of gibberish computer nonsense. Harry had almost become accustomed to how technology had advanced, but without more than the occasional glimpse of things he had t made much headway in actually understanding it.

"I've enabled Vantablack protocols," he said. Harry blinked. "There's not a bug, microphone, webcam or transmitter that will broadcast outside of this room. I have complete control of everything. Now, Harry, are you experiencing problems with your brogues?” 

"I understand you're all terribly well dressed, but perhaps you could be less insistent with your code phrases," Harry informed him.

Merlin sighed. "Worth a shot, I suppose." He turned off his tablet. "I thought they'd bugged you. Or stuck you with a transmitter and you were being discreet for once in your life."

"I'm not worth their time," Harry said

"You have no idea," Merlin muttered.

Harry scowled. "No. You'll find I don't." He tilted his head up. “I’m quite aware that there is substantial context that I’m missing at present, but I’m not the person upon whom you all seem to be insisting acquaintance. A person, it seems, who has forgone all sense and decided to join some clandestine intelligence organization instead of pursuing a lifelong passion. A passion, to which, I should like to return as quickly as possible.”

“What, going to St. Andrew’s and trying your hand at lepidopterology?” Merlin asked with a dismissive snort. “That was never you.” 

“I beg your pardon, but I don’t see how you can possibly know that.”

“For fuck’s sake, Harry, could you please drag the broom handle out of your arse for one bloody second?” Merlin glared at him, and Harry determinedly did not allow his knees to shake. It took sufficient force of will. The Scot before him was unusually terrifying. “You’ve lost thirty years of your life. Is it impossible to believe that in those thirty years you’ve actually made something resembling friends?”

Harry sniffed. “Certainly not with someone so determined to be vulgar.” 

“They must have given you such a battering at Pirbright,” Merlin muttered to himself. “You probably deserved it, too.” He met Harry’s eyes, but only for a moment before Harry decided that it was much safer to direct his gaze out the nearby window. “I’m not willing to give you up yet, you wee shite. We’ll find a way to get your memories back.”

“I’d almost prefer you didn’t,” Harry informed him primly, studiously examining the dusky countryside. 

“Well, this’d hardly be the first time I ignored your preferences,” Merlin replied, low. “I will have to lock you in here for the evening, I’m afraid. Wandering about’s as like to get you killed as not.”

Harry sniffed. “And you wonder why I have no desire to return to this life?” 

“No, no. I don’t wonder at all. I just know the man you were, instead of the boy you are.” Merlin leaned in close enough for Harry to feel the brush of his breath against his cheek. “And that man? Were he here? Would probably lay you flat as a plab and leave you to wallow in it.” 

Merlin showed himself out, and Harry found the power to take a breath. He heard the lock engaged—not a key, of course, nothing so pedestrian for this bunch of… whatever they weres—but something that sounded deafening in the space between him and the door.

“Bloody hell,” he allowed himself. He glanced quickly around the room, old habits seeking out anyone who might be listening in. “Shit. Shit. Bloody… buggering… _fuck_!”

He kicked a nearby chair, and immediately regretted it when his toe began to throb.

* * *

It was an unusually sombre mood between them as Roxy packed her kit. The armoury in the shoppe was empty save the two of them—all the other knights hanging about HQ, hoping for a peeksy at Harry and probably proving to be the insufferable gossips that they all insisted they weren’t. Roxy, as always, was making it a personal point of pride to be as prepared as possible. She had a bigger kit than anyone else when running through a mission, no matter how innocuous the mission seemed to be. For what was supposed to be a relatively simple elimination and retrieval in Caracas, she really did seem to be going all out. 

“Merlin will know what to do for him,” Roxy said for the eighth time.

“And if he don’t?” Eggsy asked, also for the eighth time.

Roxy sighed, pausing in her packing to take a sip of a Gibson so dirty it practically qualified as a sexual act. “Then he doesn’t. I’m sorry, Eggsy. I know how much Harry meant to you.” 

Eggsy waited for the ‘but.’ None came, proving yet again that Roxy was his best mate. She packed the AS50 and about eight different scopes for it, then picked up the Denel NTW-20 and examined it for a moment, turning to Eggsy with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Overkill,” he told her. Wasn’t her target a banker? 

She sighed in disappointment and reluctantly returned it to the wall. “Do you want to tell me what’s really bothering you?” 

Eggsy waffled over it a moment. Because he did. He did want to tell her everything. From V-Day onwards, he and Roxy had practically lived out of one another’s pockets. Arthur hadn’t wanted to pair them on missions together at first—“too new, Merlin, honestly, wouldn’t it be better if they were assigned experienced agents for joint fieldwork?”—but their success rate together was near perfect, and he’d eventually given into the inevitable. They still had their share of individual assignments, of course, but even then they found subtle ways to trade messages back and forth. Like double checking. Making sure everything was well. Trying not to be obvious about the need for reassurance. 

He never minded the closeness, except in situations like this where Rox could take a single glance at him and have his full measure. 

Might as well give into the inevitable: "Here's the thing, right? Before he took the bullet to his face, Harry and I fought. And I've spent a lot of time thinking that he died disappointed in me. It's the sort of thing that weighs on you, don't it? And now I know he's alive, but he doesn't remember me. And that's almost worse, you know? Because even if—miraculously—he and I managed to build something between the two of us the way he is now, he'll never remember being disappointed in me, and so he'll never really be able to forgive me for it." 

Roxy sighed. "Do you need his forgiveness? I mean, it's been a year. You do perfectly well without him."

“Yeah. Well.” He’d only ever opened his belly like this to Merlin, who’d wrapped him up in rough words and cognac then sent him off to Damascus to blow up a few buildings to help him exorcise his demons. It had worked at the time well enough. Seeing Harry now was a bit of an unexpected setback. “He told me that he did it all to repay my dad. And it made me wonder if he actually ever believed in me for me, you know?” The words stung to say, but bundled as they were in relief to get them out in the open, it felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. “And if he didn’t believe in me when he was the one to recruit me, it makes it hard to think anyone else could believe in me either.” 

Roxy’s lips pursed. She slugged back the remainder of her Gibson in a very unladylike fashion and shoved him over on the leather bench to sit next to him. They sat in silence together. It was comfortable. Grounding. Exactly what he needed. 

“I’ve always believed in you,” she told him eventually. “Is that good enough?” 

“Nah. ‘s better, innit? You actually know me.” 

Roxy ruffled his hair and stood to finish packing. She picked up a weighty-looking suitcase he didn’t recognize and Eggsy frowned. “What’s that, then?”

“New tech. Merlin’s having me test it out.” 

“That better not be my fucking jetpack.” 

Roxy laughed. “Maybe you should’ve been nicer to the last prototype he lent you.”

A knock on the door proceeded Gavin into the fitting room. “Lancelot? Your cab is here.”

“Wonderful. Thank you.” 

He gave them a moment alone, and Roxy turned the entirety of her attention back to Eggsy. “Good luck with Statesman.” 

“And you with yours.” 

She smiled and showed herself out of the room. 

Eggsy leaned back in his seat, considering the ceiling with more gravity than the elegant crown moulding probably deserved. He didn’t really deserve Roxy as a mate. Then again, he couldn’t conceive of anyone who might, so he’d have to do.

He finished his martini, deliberated and decided against making another, and settled in to wait. 

Sure enough, within the hour, Merlin stepped into the room. It wasn’t like Eggsy _hadn’t_ expected him to come, but it was sheer bloody relief when he did. 

“Harry settled in?” Eggsy asked. 

Merlin huffed. “Yes. Oedipal scunner. And not faking the amnesia, much to my disappointment.” Eggsy nodded. Too much to hope for, that. Wouldn’t it’ve been gutting, though, if he had been faking it and the look of pure contempt Eggsy’d seen in his eyes when they’d parted in the hallway had been truly meant for him? “I knew he said the army had been good for him. Never imagined he had such a flare for excessive understatement.” 

Eggsy laughed. “Seems a right prat, don’t he?” 

“At least slightly moreso than usual,” Merlin agreed, half-collapsing against the wall. Roxy had left a single onion in her martini glass, which he discovered and fished out with a small, pleased smile. 

The smile did Eggsy in. Every time.

“Merlin? What does this mean for us?” 

Saying it aloud allowed the slow-simmering worry that’d been nagging at the back of Eggsy’s mind take up residence in his ribcage, somewhere just below his sternum. It sat like an anxious lump, tricking his heart into doing double time as Merlin considered his words. He liked that about Merlin, that he didn’t offer up answers that were fast but dismissive. When he was taking his time to think things over, it meant that he was looking for the truest way to answer them, even when Eggsy wasn’t authorized to know the entirety of the truth. 

“What do you want it to mean?” Merlin finally settled on. 

“Don’t do that,” Eggsy insisted. He flapped a hand. “Don’t…” He took a moment to find the right word. “Prevaricate. It’s both of us, yeah?”

And yet, it hadn’t really ever been both of them. From the beginning, when the flush of adrenaline from V-Day and the thrill of triumph had faded away and left them both exhausted and sharing a bottle of whisky back and forth in the jet to pick up Roxy, it’d always been the three of them. Eggsy had looked for Harry in every corner of HQ, and in every shadow when he’d moved into Harry’s house on the Mews. It’d been Merlin in his ear, and Harry in his peripheral, as though both of them were determined to watch him during his missions, and ensure he didn’t cock it up. But Merlin’s voice had warmed right through, until all that was left was quiet affection and the subtlest of promises. He’d never had any promises from Harry. Hell, at the end, he wasn’t even sure he had Harry’s respect. But he had memories of their night sharing martinis, and Harry praising him all the way through the trials. 

It was all so wrapped up and bound together, impossible to separate. And maybe that was why, despite everything, all he’d ever managed around Merlin were pathetic looks and half-promises to talk about things ‘later.’ After the mission. After Merlin was finished with Bors’ debrief. After they finished the last wee bit of scotch in the bottle. 

Just… ‘after’ never came, did it? And now here they were, and this ‘after’ was significantly fucking bigger than any of the others had been. 

_After they found out Harry was alive._

Felt worlds different, and Eggsy didn’t know how to name what those feelings could be.

Merlin apparently echoed the sentiment, because he couldn’t seem to find it in himself to reply. Instead he sat in silence—far heavier than the silence Eggsy had enjoyed with Roxy—and reached out his hand towards Eggsy’s. 

Eggsy twined their fingers together, but nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please join me in welcoming human disaster pre-Kingman, pre-army Harry Hart to the table. I think it's fair to say that, considering KGC gave us "pre-army" Harry, he probably would have thought he was about eighteen when they first found him with Statesman, which the movie kind of captured, but not to the extent I wanted it to. I wanted to keep him sort of in character, but also with the qualities we see in future Harry, but also eighteen.


	3. Chapter 3

Jason slept poorly. The sheets were itchy, the bed was hard and he was going out of his damn mind. 

At least on the way to London, he’d had something to focus on. Protect Ging. Keep BG from wandering off. Watch out for the assholes who were still after them. Find out what Kingsman had to do with anything. _Fight_.

Now? After a sleepless night of lying in bed, listening to the honest to god grandfather clock in the hallway outside his door tick loud enough to shake the walls? Everything he’d been focusing his energy on was more or less done with, and he was left with nothing to think on other than everything he’d lost. 

He’d scoured the room earlier, and though it had plenty of tea, it was sorely lacking in the sort of libation he really needed. He didn’t want to turn to drink. Not in excess, anyway. A beer or two to end the day? All right. Sample the new whiskey? A pleasure. Guzzle it down until he couldn’t think straight and shit stopped hurting? Well… Champ had been one more in a line of ugly drunks Jason had met in his life, and Jason could still hear him sometimes, voicing all his doubts as Jason went through the Statesman training. 

( _“He’s a geddamn rodeo clown, Bourbon. Why is he even here?”_ ) 

The drinking had stopped, but the needling hadn’t. 

It was why Jason preferred weed. Getcha nice and relaxed. Happy and soft. But that’d gone the same way as the distillery, and it wasn’t like he could stroll down the road and hope he ran across someone holding more than their dick in their hands. 

He’d wander around a bit. Get his bearing, then figure things out from there.

He opened the door and found Galahad waiting for him on the other side, Ging tucked in close behind him. 

“Ah. Hello, Agent Tequila,” Galahad said with a smile. “I thought you might want to join us for a nip down to the pub.”

“It’s ten in the morning,” Jason pointed out. The clock had bonged less than five minutes ago. 

“Yes,” Galahad said, looking at him expectantly over the rims of his glasses. “Aren’t you the ones with the song about beer for breakfast?” 

Well, at least they were speaking the same language. 

They took the underground subway back to London, and Galahad hailed a cab that brought them to a rundown looking little place that, nonetheless, felt more welcoming than the fucking castle they’d left behind. There was something about bars that really spoke to Jason’s soul. Ging, across from him, was daintily sipping a fancy-looking martini that Galahad had ordered for her, while Galahad himself was staring down into a sleeve of Guinness like it’d tell him the secrets of the universe. Jason had settled for whatever they had on tap, which wasn’t too bad. Not as good as Statesman’s foray into bourbon-barrel aged porter from 2010, but not too bad. Him saying so had obviously annoyed a group of rough-looking fuckers a couple of tables over, but they hadn’t done much more than twitch in his direction. Everyone at their table was keeping half an eye on them, but Jason wasn’t too worried; surely the dumbass roughnecks in London were smarter than the ones in Kentucky. No one wanted to start a bar fight before noon.

The bar itself was good; spoke to him. When Galahad had invited him out, he’d been sure it’d be all dark wood and gilt mirrors and twenty dollar cocktails. This brightly lit space lined with ‘footie’ (football? Soccer? Again, the fuck?) was better. Downright homey. And according to Ging, they made a helluva martini.

“Merlin says our mark checked out of A&E, but he’s still on the move,” Galahad said, tapping the side of his glasses. Jason hadn’t jacked into the feed yet, though they’d offered to let him listen in. Something about seeing people on the other end who weren’t Statesman just wasn’t right. Not yet. Not when he was still scraped raw by losing everything that’d ever mattered to him. “Aiming for somewhere in South America, he thinks.”

“Gonna be a long flight, then,” Jason said, sipping his lager.

“Don’t you worry, bruv,” Galahad assured him. “Kingsman jet’s ace.”

The terrible music switched over to some sort of folksy rock ballad, and Jason had to throw back the rest of his beer and shake his head. “This music is bullshit.”

“What was that?” the biggest of the assholes at the other table demanded.

“I said, this music is bullshit,” he repeated. The itch under his skin began to turn into something hungrier. And he turned in his seat to face the fucker. “Gimme something good. Some Miss Lambert. ‘Gunpowder and Lead.’” He grinned at Galahad, who appeared superbly unconcerned that Jason was about to start some shit with his countrymen, and began crooning. “ _I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun. Wait by the door, and light a cigarette—_ "

“All right, mate, that’s enough of you,” the dude ordered. He shoved back from his table. “Time for you to get gone.”

“Is it that time already?” Jason asked. He grinned and stood. Lordy, but he needed this.

Galahad, despite looking as though stress relief in the form of bar fights transcended borders, took a moment to interject. “You know, boys, it would behoove you to be more welcoming to a visitor to Her Majesty’s Domain,” he pointed out. “Perhaps we might remember where we left our manners?” It shocked Jason, how easily he fell into the posh, _Downton Abbey_ -style bullshit. “They maketh man, after all.”

“Fuck off, guv.”

That was all Jason needed. “Well, I’m not rightly sure what ‘maketh man,’” he said slowly. He cracked his knuckles, then his neck. “But I’m happy to tell you what unmaketh them.”

“Not a word, I’m afraid,” Ging pointed out, seconds before the big fucker lunged at him.

“ _If he wants a fight, well, now he’s got one_ ,” he continued loudly, swinging his fist with all his weight behind it and cracking it against the man’s jaw. One by one, he collected assholes and piled them in an unconscious heap in the corner, spinning effortlessly around and tossing them over his shoulder, weaving between them and easily dodging drunken blows and swings for his head, laying them out with their own momentum and a few carefully-placed blows. He grabbed up an empty mug and smashed it over another dude’s head, sending him toppling into an acrylic table top. “ _And he ain’t seen me crazy yet…_ ”

“You’ve got a nice voice, bruv,” Galahad told him, picking up his still-full glass of Guinness and holding it safely out of the way while Jason’s elbow cracked against a dude’s jaw and sent him crashing into the table edge. 

“Thanks, man. Surely appreciate it.” He caught the fist flying towards his face and used the momentum to send the dude crashing into the mirror on the wall. It shattered, and tinkling pieces of glass accompanied him to the ground. “We done?” he asked the collection of unconscious drunks. When none of them answered, he nodded. “We done.” He sat down again and waved to the bartender. “Can I have another, please?”

Before the lady could reply, there was a screech from the television, and a pretty redhead appeared on the screen to announce her plans to hold the world hostage. 

Once she finished, Elton John still cursing in the background, the feed returned to its normal programming, leaving the three of them stunned and staring at the screen.

“Well,” Ging muttered, “This has been enlightening.” She returned her attention to Jason. “Good thing your stash got blown up.”

Jason’s heart lurched.

“Sweet buggering fuck,” Galahad said. He stood, leaving his stout untouched. “Well, come on then. Back to HQ. Time to save the world.”

* * *

“We’ve traced the signal to Colombia,” Merlin said when Eggsy walked in. He’d dropped Tequila and Ginger Ale off at their R&D department to look through what offerings they had, but checking in with Merlin personally was a long habit from too many missions to count. So far as Eggsy knew, he was the only knight permitted to enter Merlin’s domain without knocking. “What looks to be a compound. Middle of nowhere. We can drop you within three miles, but it’ll be a long slog through the jungle to get in.”

“Wicked,” Eggsy muttered, looking at the schematics. “When do we leave?”

“Directly,” Merlin said. “As soon as the Statesman agents are ready to fly.”

“Merlin—” Eggsy began.

“I’ve taken the liberty of arranging to take Harry out of HQ,” he said, avoiding Eggsy’s eyes. “Ginger Ale has suggested a more familiar setting may trigger the return of his memories.”

“You have to know, even if he gets his memories back—”

“Eggsy, there’s something I have to tell you,” Merlin interrupted. With a flick of his wrist and a few keystrokes of his tablet, he threw up a small collection of old photographs on the screen across from them. For a moment, it took Eggsy a second to reconcile what he was seeing. Distance shots. Small crowds. Casual gatherings. One in a restaurant that Eggsy recognized as being close enough to the shoppe that he’d visited a few times after work in search of a decent curry. It didn’t take long to spot them; Harry and Merlin, heads bowed together. Looking intimate and comfortable with the sort of gentle familiarity that Eggsy ached for. From either of them. From both. Who could tell anymore?

The photographs were obviously from Kingsman central servers, and from the file stamp in the corner, they’d been pulled from an internal agent investigation. His stomach lurched when he recognized his own callsign before realizing that, no, the investigation would have been aimed at Harry.

“You two were…?”

“Involved, yes,” Merlin confirmed, blandly.

“What happened?”

“Chester King was made Arthur,” Merlin said quietly. “Had us watched to confirm his suspicions about ‘fraternization.’ Then offered us a choice: each other, or Kingsman.”

“And Harry chose Kingsman,” Eggsy murmured.

Merlin frowned. “You’re sure it wasn’t me?”

“No. You would never.” Merlin would have failed the dog test, if it’d ever been put in front of him. Eggsy had to hold onto that, if they were ever going to get to ‘after.’ 

“How can you say that? Kingsman is everything to me.” His brogue harshened with irritation, though whether it was Eggsy he was angry at or himself, Eggsy couldn’t have said.

“It is now,” Eggsy agreed. “But you’ve a tell, don’t you? Every time you tell me or Roxy to remember our training—when things are going tits up, when we’re scared, even when I thought Harry died—your left eye twitches. Always wondered what it meant. Now I know. The only reason you keep telling Rox 'n me to remember our training and shut down whatever emotions we might be feeling is because it's been easier for you when you do the same. Because you don’t want us to feel the way you did, when he picked Kingsman.” Merlin looked shattered, but Eggsy didn’t dare move towards him. “I’m right, ain’t I?”

“I always said you were too damn perceptive,” Merlin muttered, his tone all bald affection and regret.

“Two-way mirror,” Eggsy agreed.

“Fuck,” Merlin said. He shook his head.

“So, what, you still in love with him?” Eggsy asked.

“Are you?”

Eggsy had always known the spectre hanging in the space between them had looked like Harry, he’d just always thought he was the one inviting it in.

“After we get back, yeah? Sit down. Have a proper conversation,” Eggsy said. 

“After,” Merlin sniffed, the corners of his mouth tugging at his face. “I think after is past due.” They regarded each other quietly. “Make sure you stop by the shoppe. They’ve mocked up a few things for Agent Tequila and Ginger Ale.”

“Only the best,” Eggsy smiled. He turned to go and paused.

“Eggsy?”

He turned back round. “I know you. I know you would've chosen Harry every time. And I need you to know that I would choose you. I do choose you.”

Merlin’s face remained impassive. “Over Kingsman?” And Eggsy could see the deep swell of concern creeping into his gaze, the sudden reminder that Eggsy hadn't shot JB. The not-quite-fully-formed doubts lurking in his mind. For a man who prided himself on his neutrality, Merlin was a damn sight easier to read than he should've been. Or maybe it was because Eggsy had spent a year learning his language.

“Over Chester King," Eggsy said, viciously wishing he'd done worse than switch a couple of glasses of poisoned brandy. "Fortunately, Arthur seems a good bloke. Not sure it’ll be a problem with him.”

Merlin huffed out a half-laugh. “Get going, you. This is no time for emotion.”

His left eye twitched and Eggsy grinned. Without another word, he swooped in and pressed his lips against Merlin’s—all too briefly—and then disappeared out the door.

He found Agent Tequila and Ginger Ale waiting for him in the armoury. “Agent Galahad,” Ginger Ale said with a smile. “I was just briefing Agent Tequila on the equipment we have available for the mission.”

Eggsy nodded and picked out his usual umbrella. “Got mine, thanks, but you go ahead.”

“They don't quite have the same equipment we're used to," Ginger told Tequila, sounding apologetic, even though that seemed a bollocks thing to be apologetic about. "But I think you'll appreciate some of their toys."

"Not sure if I could carry around one of these umbrellas without feeling like a damn fool," Tequila admitted. “No offense,” he tossed at Eggsy.

"I didn't think so either," Ginger told him. She waved him over to a table full of toys. His eyes were immediately drawn to a particularly fine shotgun; Eggsy believed the term was ‘mare's leg.’ "I've modified this one for you. Along with standard ammunition, it has the option for percussive shots as well as explosive rounds, and if you adjust it here it will deliver an electric charge of about five thousand volts." She continued down the line. Grenades, explosives, their usual accoutrement of equipment, slightly modified and improved. She’d done a cracking good job. 

"And that?" Tequila asked, gesturing to a cricket bat.

"Mine detector," she told him. She handed it over. "Listen, I've been thinking... I should go with you."

Tequila nodded. "Okay."

Ginger frowned. "Okay?"

"Hell, Ging, I always thought you could be a field agent. Whiskey was the one who kept voting against you." He gestured to the door. "We’ll need to get set up with some of their fancy bulletproof suits, though, all right? We’re the last of Statesman, and I'm gonna need to make sure that you make it out of this alive."

She grinned like a sunrise.

“About that,” Eggsy said. “If you’d both follow me.”

“What call sign you taking?” Tequila asked on the metro to the shoppe. “You’ve pretty much got your pick.”

Ginger Ale smiled. “I’ve always been partial to amaretto.”

Eggsy left the newly-crowned Agent Amaretto in Gavin’s capable hands, and led Tequila into fitting room one. He looked around, obviously uncomfortable as Eggsy had been at first, eyeing the rack of suits as though they were particularly offensive.

“Agent Tequila, can I share something with you?” Eggsy asked.

Tequila cocked an eyebrow and nodded. Eggsy waved him over to the closest mirror. It didn’t quite have the same effect; he was a good half a head taller than Eggsy, and Eggsy wasn’t able to loom the way Harry had, over his shoulder. But with his denim, his cowboy hat, and the lost look in his eyes, Eggsy couldn’t help but stand taller.

“You know what I see?” he asked.

Tequila frowned. “What are we doing here?”

Eggsy barreled on. “I see a man whose prolly been underestimated his whole life. Because people see a face, hear an accent, and they accept that's all there is. And in a lot of ways, it's easy, innit? Easy to let them keep thinking what they think. Because it's gratifying when you can surprise them and they see what's really there. But then they _keep_ being surprised, and soon it stops being gratifying, and it just starts grating on you.”

“Projecting much?” Tequila muttered, staring at his feet, his cheeks aflame with shame.

“Fuck off and let me finish. People been looking at me that same way my whole life, until Harry. And I get the feeling you haven't had anyone who bothered to see more than a nice face. But I see more'n that.”

"Yeah?” Tequila demanded. "What?"

"I see me. And I’m damn good at what I do." Mollified, Tequila snorted in amusement. Eggsy coaxed him back away from the mirror. "Here. Merlin sent along your measurements. It's ready made, but it'll sort you better than denim." He tossed Tequila a blazer. Tequila blinked at it in surprise. "We have a couple of open seats at the table, you know. And I reckon that having a background in independent intelligence looks pretty fucking impressive on a CV."

Tequila, for the first time since Eggsy had seen him standing in the shoppe, grinned with uncomplicated delight. "You’re goddamn right it does."

He pushed off his denim jacket and tossed it to Eggsy, who neatly hung it up on the rack of clothes behind him. When he pulled on the blazer, and the heavy material settled on his shoulders, his smile impossibly widened.

"Even goes with my boots," he said, admiring the lines of his legs.

“Did you want trousers to go with it?” Eggsy asked.

“Hell naw. You can take the cowboy out of the rodeo, but you can’t expect him to dress proper,” Tequila laughed.

"I reckon that’s the sum of it," Eggsy agreed. Tequila pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes. "Come on, then. Let's go kick Poppy's arse."

“Fuck yeah.”

* * *

Harry Hart continued to be a sensible man. 

When Merlin had appeared at his door that evening with an invitation to escape the oppressive comforts of his room, he’d jumped on the opportunity. The air between them was stiff and uncomfortable, but he’d been led back to their metro, and then out from the tailor shop to a waiting cab. 

Merlin escorted him to a rather charming home in Stanhope Mews. 

“Home,” Merlin told him, ever hopeful. And charming though it was, it elicited nothing more than an appreciation for the fact that, as an elder who’d taken leave of all other senses, at least Harry had retained some semblance of good taste. 

While Harry was certain Merlin had a key—the man seemed the type to carry around enough skeleton keys to access all the homes in London—he instead knocked.

"Don't be shocked," Merlin said from the corner of his mouth.

Moments later, a rather attractive woman about ten years Merlin’s junior answered the door.

Horror struck him. "Good Lord, am I married?" Harry demanded. Had mother had her way at long last? He peered at the woman, who did seem familiar, though he couldn't articulate why. "I'm terribly sorry to ask this, but are you my wife?"

The woman stared at him and then transferred the whole of her unimpressed glare to Merlin. "Really, Hamish?"

"We can't have him at headquarters, Michelle. Too much risk." He turned to Harry. "Harry Hart, this is Michelle Unwin. Eggsy's—Galahad’s mother."

Ah. That explained the familiarity. Pity... Harry had rather hoped he was getting something back. London, he'd thought, might do that for him, while four blank walls and a host of visits to the physician had not.

"When you said you were taking me home, I supposed you meant my own."

"Funny, that," Merlin muttered. "Regardless, Eggsy's home is the most highly secured of all the Kingsman private residences."

"Why?"

From the next room came the plaintive coo of a young child.

Harry's brows shot up. It wasn’t an unreasonable thought, for a young man of Galahad’s age and dubious background, to have a child. Yet one might wonder at how he managed fatherhood, considering Harry’s impressions of life as a Kingsman agent.

Merlin must have read the thoughts flitting across his face—as though they'd known each other for years, which was endlessly irritating—because he shook his head. "His sister."

"Ah."

That could explain quite a bit: mother living in his home, a young sister in need of care. Two, no, three surveillance cameras concealed in the front hallway, another four outside the front door. Galahad was someone desperate to keep his family safe. Either the violence of his position in intelligence had made him paranoid, or there was something in their shared past that informed his household fortifications. He thought of Galahad’s determined glances, as though he could mentally shove the memories of their association back into Harry's head. Whatever he had been to Galahad, he'd been influential enough that his amnesia seemed to have broken the young man's heart.

Michelle led them through the front entry to the dining room, where a young child dressed in a frilly pink jumper was dropping cubed pieces of chicken off her plate and into the grateful maw of a portly pug.

"Daisy, this is Harry. He's going to stay with us for a few days while Eggsy's out of town," Michelle said into the spaces between the pug's breathy pants. The girl didn't respond and Michelle sighed. "Daisy. _Daisy_. For fu— Pete's sake." She shook her head. "Do you two want to eat?"

“I couldn’t,” Harry replied, eyeing up the dubious offerings. He believed they were called pot noodles. “Perhaps a tour?”

“I’ll take him, Michelle,” Merlin replied. 

Fairly obvious in her relief, Michelle nodded and returned her attention to her child and her dinner. 

Harry trailed Merlin through the dining room, into a well-stocked kitchen and better-stocked study. Several decanters of amber-coloured liquor sat at a small dry bar in the corner, and Harry examined the scads of books taking up room on the various shelves around them.

"I must admit to a certain amount of relief," Harry said quietly. He could be permitted an indulgent confession, surely, if he and Merlin were as close as the man insisted. "When I first thought that this... domestic arrangement was mine..."

Merlin chuckled. "A wife and child? Wouldn’t your mother have been thrilled at that?"

The comment took Harry aback. Not because it wasn't inherently accurate. Even when his mother had landed on the correct assumption that Harry was as queer as a nine bob note, she had insisted that it was something to be brushed under the rug, taken out on subtle visits to certain resorts while he enjoyed the benefits of matrimony. But that this Merlin was so familiar with her feelings on the subject spoke not only of long acquaintanceship, but an intimacy that implied a steady, perhaps even a deep, friendship. One Merlin had insisted upon earlier, though he’d given little proof of the matter beyond outlandish claims Harry found hard to believe.

It struck Harry, then. He'd largely been considering his amnesia in academic terms; memories he had no use for, if he intended to continue his pursuance of his current field of study. It hadn't occurred to him that he might have lost something as significant as a close friendship. He had rarely had such relationships through school, how could he suspect he’d formed one later in life? And especially with a man such as Merlin.

Merlin was regarding him with mild concern, and Harry coughed and straightened.

"Pardon me," he said quietly. "Is there a lavatory I might be able to use?"

"Second door on the left," Merlin answered. 

"Much obliged."

He ducked out of the room and down the hall. 

When he opened the door, he was met head on by a stuffed cairn terrier. 

He frowned at it, right up until he saw the nameplate beneath.

"Mr. Pickle," he murmured.

And suddenly thirty years of forgotten moments slammed into him with the explosive force of a hydrogen bomb.

He fell back out of the loo, into the hallway, and managed to upset a few of the innumerable photographs of Daisy which had replaced his carefully cultivated collection of butterflies. Mr. Pickle once again stood in front of him, wide eyes trusting and tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, waiting for Harry to decide whether or not to pull the trigger and end his life. Harry’s hand had been utterly still, as he’d tried to tell himself that a fucking dog wasn’t worth his career with Kingsman. 

And he’d fired.

_He’d fired. He’d shot Mr. Pickle._

But, no. He’d never hurt Mr. Pickle. 

He had meant to, but he hadn’t. The memories hurt like a kick to the teeth.

He shook his head, trying to clear the cottony remnants of his brain trauma, a crushing pain pulsing against the back of his eye. Valentine. A gunshot. _Eggsy._

"Harry?" 

Merlin' s voice reached him from down the hall and Harry turned. 

"All right?" Merlin asked cautiously.

Harry's jaw flapped as he tried to articulate the sheer volume of his sudden emotional turmoil, and managed to come up with, "it was a blank."

Merlin frowned. "Beg pardon?"

Harry's gaze shot to Mr. Pickle and he waved his hand. "It was a fucking blank!"

A smile began to stretch the corners of Merlin’s mouth. "Fucking right it was."

"A blank!" Harry yelled again. He crossed the hall in four wide steps and pulled Merlin into his arms. "A bloody fucking blank, Merlin!"

"If you gents are quite finished!" Eggsy's mother called from the dining room. "It's hard enough watching me own fucking mouth— oh, fuck me."

Daisy giggled and Harry reluctantly pulled himself out of Merlin's arms. He clapped the other man's cheek in his palm. 

"Merlin," he said quietly. Reverently. "Did you know bringing me here would help?"

"I didn't realize the fucking dog was the trauma that'd set you up, if that's what you mean," Merlin chuckled. "But I wasn't going to give up hoping."

"Of course you weren't." Abruptly, Harry realized how bloody much he wanted to kiss the man. To map every corner of his mouth and reacquaint himself with his taste. A liberty he might finally be able to take once again. Obviously something that happened to Chester King, and he doubted that their current Arthur—the previous Ector, and wasn't that as pleasant a surprise as Pope Francis in the Holy See—would have the same compunctions against such things, given his own previous involvement with Lamorak before her death.

But now wasn't the time.

He was back at home. Modified, to be sure, but his home nonetheless. The situation with Valentine must have been resolved, if they had permitted Merlin to leave Kingsman grounds. Whatever calamity had befallen Statesman, it must have been unrelated; Kingsman was too deeply involved in the mission to stop Valentine to have ceded it to another agency. But then what had happened? 

Eggsy had become Galahad. Had become Galahad because Harry was, for all intents and purposes, dead. Had become Galahad with Harry's last words to him having been ones of deep and inconsolable disappointment. He replayed the moment in his head, when Eggsy had walked into Arthur's office and seen him standing there alive; the elation tempered by worry and disbelief. How must he be feeling now?

Never bloody mind how he was feeling... He was on a mission with Agent Tequila. His feelings had best take a backseat.

"Eggsy," Harry said, despite himself.

Merlin smiled, a genuine thing that tucked itself into Harry's heart and seemed content to stay. He tapped the side of his glasses. "Agent Galahad, report."

It was disorienting, wanting to snap to attention and provide a sitrep, and knowing that he wasn't the one to whom Merlin was speaking.

"They're just landing in Colombia," Merlin dutifully reported a moment later. He leveled a considering look Harry's way. "Let's head back to headquarters. I'll see if I can't make something that will loop you in. And," he added with a sly grin, "Look a bit more dignified than an eyepatch."

Michelle seemed unsurprised to see them go, despite the brevity of their visit. She wished Merlin a fond goodbye—"She calls you Hamish?" "When Eggsy introduced me as Merlin, she wouldn't stop laughing."—and saw them off with Daisy flapping a mad hand at them in farewell. They reached HQ just as Eggsy, Agent Tequila and Agent Amaretto were beginning their trek through the jungle towards Poppy's compound.

Merlin provided him with glasses, already modified and prepared for his use. He’d put quite a few eggs in the basket of Harry’s memories returning, it seemed. Or perhaps it was because Merlin had always had more faith in Harry than Harry deserved. They compensated for his lack of depth perception, and though if he glanced too far to the right the feed became helplessly distorted, they were otherwise completely flawless.

Harry set himself to observe mutely. He couldn’t distract Eggsy with this. Not yet. 

"There are so many goddamn mines," Tequila muttered, the mine detector beeping wildly in his hands as they picked their way through the tangle of explosives and weeds beneath their feet. "How's she even making it back and forth?"

"With this many, it can't be a map," Amaretto replied. "The undergrowth is too severe. She must have a way of disabling them." She knelt down and peered at the mine. “Not your conventional landmine. Seems to be less mechanical and more electrical. I don’t think I could physically disable it without it blowing, though.” 

“Not picking up anything like an external signal,” Eggsy said. And how marvellous it was to hear his voice. “But I’ll keep scanning for one.” 

They paused halfway there, coming upon a bisected corpse in the middle of the jungle. Despite the severity of his wounds, there wasn’t much blood of which to speak. Eggsy knelt down next to him and grabbed the briefcase still clutched in his hands. 

"It's the executive order she was on about," Eggsy muttered, frowning at the good quality paper. Poppy's signature was scrawled across the bottom, slightly above another line left for the American president. He grabbed up the man’s wallet next. “Charles Greene. Sad bugger never even made it out of the jungle."

"We're working with an unknown variable," Merlin said. "Be careful." 

Eggsy dropped the document and took another long moment to eye up the corpse. Cleanly separated at his midriff, but the wound had been cauterized. Not like Valentine's henchperson, who had left a string of halved bodies with their life's blood soaking through to every surface. 

The hike is shorter than Harry would have expected, though perhaps it seemed longer to the three agents on the ground. When they found the compound, they stopped as one and looked at the sign welcoming them to Poppy Land.

"Six guards on the gate," Eggsy muttered.

Tequila pulled out a small scope from his front pocket and it zoomed in through the gate to evaluate manpower. "I'm seeing at least fifteen inside. Probably more." 

“We’ll have to deal with them all,” Eggsy said.

"And then we locate Poppy, have her disseminate the cure, and then bring her in," Amaretto said. "Will there be enough time to save everyone?" 

"There has to be," Eggsy said. Harry wondered how many people Eggsy knew, back in the estates, who were currently covered in blue rash. "Let's go, then.” 

Eggsy took a step forward.

The 'click' was audible throughout Merlin's office. 

Time seemed to stop. 

Eggsy froze. His feed swung towards Tequila and Amaretto, and Harry looked through their feeds and saw exactly how desperate his gaze suddenly seemed.

"Missed one," Eggsy whispered. 

"Don't move," Amaretto ordered. "We could freeze it. Or I can try to deactivate it. We know there's some sort of central control."

"Layered enough that our watches haven't even identified the feed for it. We don't have time. The people waiting on us don't have time." Eggsy smiled. "You two need to go. Stop Poppy. Save lives."

"We can't leave you here, man," Tequila stated.

"You have to." 

Tequila's jaw clenched, but he grabbed Amaretto's arm and tugged her away, into the jungle away from Eggsy but angled towards the compound, fingers flexing on his ridiculous gun. Eggsy watched them go before turning his gaze back towards the guards.

"If I lure them over here, I can take them all out. Give Tequila and Amaretto some extra breathin' room."

Harry would have considered the same option. Three against twenty, when all three were well-trained and had the element of surprise, was substantially different than two against twenty, regardless of their abilities. The odds didn’t weigh in their favour prior to Eggsy’s misstep. Now they were substantially worse.

"Or you could stay perfectly still and wait for them to come back for you," Merlin growled. 

Eggsy sniffed. "And what? Wait for my legs to go numb and fall over? At least I can make it worth it, right?"

Harry unmuted his feed, unable to take it any longer. "Eggsy.” 

"Harry?" Eggsy breathed out, a punched-out sound of immense relief. He followed it with a rueful chuckle. "It was Mr. Pickle?"

"Of course it was," Harry agreed. "Eggsy, I forbid you to move."

Eggsy sniffed. "Sorry, but it seems as though I'm going to disappoint you again."

Harry's face contorted, painfully. "Oh, my boy. You've never disappointed me. I am so, so proud of what you've become. What you've always been." It was coming too close to sounding like a goodbye, and it tore at Harry's heart, but he couldn't conceive of these, their potential last words, being anything like the ones he'd used to tear at Eggsy the last time they'd seen each other. 

Eggsy took a shaky breath. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at his feet. Harry could barely bring himself to look at the thing threatening to rob him of Eggsy before he had a chance to say everything that he should have said, since the beginning. 

"There has to be a way to get yourself out of this," Harry insisted.

Eggsy looked down at his watch. "Still not connecting to whatever's programming them." He took a deep breath. "If there was, I'd find it," Eggsy promised. "Merlin, I'm sorry," he repeated. "Don’t look like we’re going to get to ‘after.’” He took a breath. “For the record, I think we could've been fucking spectacular."

Merlin choked, the most emotion Harry and ever heard from him while standing at his desk and running point on a mission.

"Send me off, darling, will you? Some classy shite."

Merlin shook his head. "No, my boy. For you, only the best."

Merlin turned on John Denver, hands trembling. Harry watched him trying to shut down. To finish the mission and grieve later. But while it had become his mantra over the years, it seemed to be failing him. His left eye twitched madly.

"They're coming," Eggsy said. In the background, Merlin heard someone ask about a lawyer. "This is some good stuff, Merlin. You never struck me as a country music fan."

"John Denver is so much more than country music," Merlin informed him. 

"...bring him to me," Poppy's voice floated across the feed. "I'm deactivating the--"

They took another step closer and abruptly the feed cut out with a hiss of electric feedback, leaving Merlin and Harry staring at a black screen. The glasses destroyed. Eggsy destroyed. 

Merlin took a deep breath and switched his attention to Agent Tequila. "Are you two in position?"

Harry frowned. Tequila's feed was black as well. As was Amaretto's. 

Harry swung on Merlin. "Suit me up. Get me over there."

"No."

"Merlin," Harry growled, equal parts angry and betrayed.

"There’s no sense in it, Harry. If you go, it might only be to clean up bodies," Merlin said, dispassionately. “It would be too late for the cure, and too late for them.” 

"No. This must be salvageable. I refuse to believe he—they're dead." Merlin’s mouth remained a thin line. "Don't you dare do this to me, Merlin."

"Do it to you?" Merlin repeated quietly. Harry stared at him, quite abruptly realising that what he'd mistaken for Merlin's usual unassailable calm was barely covering for his heart being very neatly shredded in his chest. "I love that boy, Harry, and it seems that I've lost him before I had a chance to say. Don't you dare try to make this about you."

Harry turned helplessly back to the black screens, willing something—anything—to give him some indication that Eggsy was alive.

"How fast could the fastest plane get us there?" Harry demanded.

"Not fast enough," Merlin said. "From this moment onward, we have to assume that the mission has failed and all active agents are dead. I—” He took a steadying breath. "I have an agent in Caracas. I'm redirecting now. See if we can't manage to save the people impacted by the virus."

Neither of them could bring themselves to say that it was too late to save anyone else.


	4. Chapter 4

Their glasses shorted with a hiss of feedback and Jason snatched his off his face before it deafened him. 

"The fuck?" he whispered.

"A targeted EMP," Amaretto said. "It must be the only way to temporarily deactivate all the mines. No wonder we couldn't hack the signal—there wasn't one to hack."

He dropped the useless things to the ground and watched as the guards grabbed Galahad and dragged him off the deactivated mine. He seemed prepared to struggle when one of them shoved the barrel of a gun right in his face. Jason tensed, finger slipping down to the trigger, but Amaretto laid a hand on his arm. 

"Look," she said. 

The rest of Poppy's people had gathered at the gates of the compound, clustering together to get a look at things. It'd be the perfect place to drop a grenade, it Galahad weren't right in the middle of it. Jason's fingers twitched. Listening to the goodbyes over the line had been the biggest gut-punch since seeing Champ's feed cut out. And even if their goodbyes had already been said, he didn't have it in him to make them real.

"Come on, man," Jason whispered. "Get their attention but good."

As though he could hear them, Galahad lashed out at the guards holding him. And, hell, watching him move had always been impressive, but now he was lashing out as though it was the last stand of a condemned man. He whipped his arms out and away from the guards, spinning through the air to scissor kick a bunch of the goons closest to him. It barely lasted a minute. He managed to knock a few down, but there were just too many; one of them cracked the butt of his gun against Galahad's temple, stunning him just long enough for the others to get the boots in.

But it'd gotten the job done; all of them were following behind as they dragged him into the compound, distracted enough that they didn't notice Jason and Amaretto sneaking up to the gates. They waited until he'd been yanked inside a diner on the other side of the makeshift street before turning to each other. 

"Batter's up," Amaretto said, pulling out one of the cricket ball-styled grenades.

Jason twisted the cricket bat around in his hand. "Got different weight than a baseball bat." 

She shrugged. "Make it count." 

She tossed the grenade his way and he cracked it into the compound. It landed inches away from the hot dog vendor. 

"Home run," Jason said.

It exploded a second later, and he and Amaretto ran forward.

* * *

Eggsy heard the explosion, followed by the swelling chaos outside, and Poppy straightened in her seat. 

"I have a feeling you weren't entirely honest with me, Mr. King," she said.

"I'm afraid I have no idea what's going on," Eggsy said, at his poshest best. He was speaking through a split lip and bruised ribs, but he could practically hear Harry telling him that a gentleman could maintain decorum even with such minor inconveniences. God, it had been such a brainfuck to hear his voice in his ear. "I simply came here to tell you that the executive order you had drafted never made it to President Greenwood."

“But you see, that's impossible," Poppy laughed. "I sent one of my best men along with it."

“Regardless of the escort, Mr. Greene didn’t reach his destination.” He leaned forward. “I’m here to ensure that your best interests are being looked after.” 

“And your decision to attack my men?” 

“I don’t much care for violence, Ms. Adams. And your men were being quite rough.” 

Poppy laughed in delight. “They are rough, aren’t they?”

Eggsy opened his mouth to retort when one of her robot dogs darted up and out the dog door. The other one helpfully informed them it was at 89% charge. 

"Up," Poppy said. The two men guarding them—both with guns trained at the back of Eggsy's head, fingers sloppily resting against the triggers and ready to fire at a moment's notice—grabbed him and dragged him to the kitchen. She grabbed his tie and stuck it in the meat grinder. He tried to snap backwards, held in place by the two goon shoving him forward as she turned it on. By the time they'd released him, it was too late to do more than struggle; Kingsman ties were all but impossible to rip. His ribs ached, threatening to snap at the hard press of the metal against his chest. 

His face came dangerously close to the pulverizing shredders, and he winced and screwed his eyes shut, preparing for it. At least it was heads first instead of feet. 

As suddenly as they’d started, they stopped. Poppy stood a few feet away from him, finger on the power button. 

"Just in case you're telling the truth, I'm going to hold off on grinding you up," she told him. "But you'd better hope that whoever's out there doesn't come storming through the door to rescue you. Because they're not going to get more than a foot inside before I turn you into a hamburger."

The entire place seemed to have fallen into chaos. At one point, her attention was distracted by Elton John screaming at her from her tablet, but her finger remained perilously close to the power button. Every time Eggsy so much as flinched her hand twitched back towards the power and he froze all over again. It was getting harder to breathe, his chest pressed tight against the side of the grinder, and he couldn't help but think that if he did manage to somehow get out of this, he was going to collapse uselessly to the floor when the blood all flooded back to his legs.

It seemed like an hour before Tequila and Amaretto stormed in through the door, guns up and pointed Poppy's way. 

Poppy's hand hovered a hairsbreadth from the button. Tequila took it all in, barely blinking, and frowned. 

"If this is how you treat your own people, I’m beginning to understand why you levelled us," he stated. 

Poppy's eyebrow twitched, but she backed away from the meat grinder. If Eggsy had been able to breathe, he would've heaved a great sigh of relief. As such, his lungs felt perilously close to collapsing. 

"You know, when I destroyed Statesman and found I'd missed a couple, I never thought you two would be so much trouble." She stepped around the counter to collect the red shellacked suitcase protecting the software needed to start sending out the cure. "I guess I should've listened to him and been more thorough." 

“Let’s have the cure,” Tequila told her, gun still aimed at her head. 

“Now, see, I just found out that my brilliantly worded letter never reached the United States, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to refu—”

Before she could say any more, Amaretto grabbed a handful of her hair and slammed her head into the countertop. Poppy cried out and dropped the case. Before she could do more than struggle in Amaretto’s hold, Tequila stuck her with a needle full of concentrated drugs, their best bet as far as Merlin had been concerned. As Amaretto explained the imminent nature of her death, Tequila hopped over the counter and flipped out a switchblade to cut Eggsy loose. 

“Thanks,” Eggsy said, gasping in a full breath. His ribs ached and he wrapped an arm around them.

“Don’t mention it,” Tequila replied. 

"Awww," Poppy slurred. "You weren't a lawyer." 

She grinned at Amaretto and offered up the password before dropping down behind the counter. 

“Want the honours?” Tequila asked, gesturing to the briefcase. “Given it was your head in the meat grinder, and all?”

“No, by all means,” Eggsy insisted. “Seems right you’re the ones to do it.”

Tequila smiled and tilted it to Amaretto. She’d barely put her hands on the keyboard when a length of rope whistled through the air and looped around Tequila’s neck. Eggsy grabbed the revolver from Tequila’s belt and whipped around, barrel up, and frowned at the unfamiliar man shadowing the entrance to the diner. Despite the gun trained on him, the man yanked Tequila backwards, the noose tightening dangerously around his neck as he was pulled off his feet. Tequila hit the floor with an audible crack of tile. 

“Jack?” Amaretto whispered. 

“Ginger,” ‘Jack’ replied, brow drawn in confusion as he looked at her. “The hell are you doing here?” 

She shook her head wildly. “You’re dead.”

“Not so much.” Tequila tried to get up and he looped his lasso around his elbow, pulling it taught. “Not so fast, pard.” There was a crackle of electricity at the base of the rope and Tequila froze. At least now Eggsy knew what had happened to the lawyer. “Afraid I’m going to have to ask you to hand over that case, Ginger. Before I’m forced to do something I’d really prefer not to do in front of a lady.” 

Amaretto stared at him, sick comprehension slowly creeping into her eyes. “You were working for Poppy.”

“You fucking sold us out,” Tequila grit out. His face was getting red, and while he scraped at the noose around his neck, his fingers did little more than leave crimson lines in the skin around the rope. 

“An unfortunate necessity,” Jack told them. “She wouldn’t have trusted me fully if I hadn’t given her Statesman.”

“And now she’s dead, you’re going to, what, hold the President to the deal?” Eggsy demanded. 

“Hell no,” he replied. “This was never about Poppy getting her way. Hell, the plan was always to kill her once all those fucking junkies got theirs. But it was awful hard to get her alone. Thank y’all for clearing the way. Real helpful. Now all I have to do is sit back and let her shit do its job.” He jerked the rope again and Tequila gasped out a choked breath as he was hauled up, almost to his knees, his eyes bulging out. “Now if you wouldn’t mind sliding that over here. I’d really hate to kill the last of us, but needs must and all.”

“But _why_?” Amaretto demanded. 

“Goddammit, Ginger. You’re the one whose showed me her picture every goddamn time you needed to kickstart my brain, and you ask me why?” 

Amaretto looked stricken. With a glance to Eggsy, she took the case and slid it across the floor. 

“Much obliged.” He eased off on the stress to the rope and Tequila took in a staggering breath Eggsy could practically feel from where he stood. 

Jack’s attention was temporarily pulled away as the briefcase hit his boot, and in that second of hesitation, Amaretto had her gun up. She fired; not directly at Jack, but at the length of rope still dangerously attached to the noose around Tequila’s neck. It broke neatly in two, and Tequila slumped over. Before Jack could do more than raise his head, Eggsy was charging. He slid across the floor, the toes of his oxfords kicking against the case and sending it spinning back to Amaretto. 

Jack fought as though he had nothing to lose. A wild swing of his arm brought a gun up, and Eggsy rolled over, grabbing the front of Tequila’s blazer and hauling them both out of the way. They jumped to their feet as one, Tequila on the right side and Eggsy taking left as they flew at Jack. Jack dodged like a professional boxer, seamlessly ducking under Eggsy’s fist and spinning the gun around in his hand to try and fire into Eggsy’s side. It left his flank open, but when Tequila tried to take advantage he slid out of the way like a snake. 

Across the room, Amaretto desperately tried to hammer in the password. They just had to keep him distracted long enough for her to—

Jack fired his gun at her, and Amaretto barely dodged back out of the way, leaving the case exposed. She saw her mistake almost immediately, and threw herself at it just as Jack took another shot at the screen. The bullet hit her back, and she and the case both went tumbling over the other side of the counter.

“No!” Tequila screamed. He turned on Jack, fury etched into his face, his fists swinging up at Jack wild and without coordination, blindly trying to land anything resembling a hit. Jack dodged, easily, but he fortunately dodged his way right into Eggsy’s foot as he landed a roundhouse kick to the fucker’s face. It staggered him enough for Tequila to whip his mare’s legs up from his side and get it around Jack’s neck, and Eggsy took advantage of the expanse of open torso to lay him the fuck out. 

Breathing laboured from the force of the blows, Jack seemed to wilt in Tequila’s arms, and Eggsy managed one last hammer to the temple before he went completely limp. 

“Ging?!” Tequila shouted, letting Jack hit the ground with a smack of his head on tile. He crossed the diner in four quick strides and looked over the counter, Eggsy close at his heels.

On the other side of the counter, Amaretto was staggering to her feet. Shaking her shoulders, the clatter of a bullet hitting the floor seemed loud in the air between them. The squashed piece of metal rattled on the tile for only a moment before stilling. 

“I have to say, Kingsman tailoring is quality stuff,” she told Tequila.

He laughed, a punched-out sound of relief. “Christ. Now I know why my mama was always complaining about her nerves. Jeee-zus.”

Amaretto typed in the password before another word passed between them. As soon as the program confirmed that the cure had been deployed, the lingering tension bled out of the air and Eggsy could take a breath. 

“You bastards,” Jack gritted from the floor. 

They all turned their attention his way—why hadn’t Eggsy checked to make sure he was well and truly out?—and Eggsy automatically took a step back when he saw the cologne bottle in Jack’s hand. Amaretto had briefed him on what those things could do; the slow, agonizing death of suffocating on the blue gel within, as you managed to suck in minute amounts of oxygen from it, but not enough to live through the experience.

“You utter fucks. Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?” 

His thumb twitched on the nozzle, but before it could do more than twitch, the sound of gunfire once again filled the diner. He screamed as his hand exploded, and the bottle flew across the room to explode harmlessly on the far side of Poppy’s desk. Eggsy lowered his arm—splattered with the gel, but not enough to do any harm—and grinned when he saw Roxy step in through the door. 

She touched her glasses. “Merlin? All agents confirmed alive. And—?” She looked at Eggsy expectantly, who nodded. “The cure has been successfully deployed.” 

He waved weakly at the glasses, before turning his attention to Jack. Once again, the man was trying to rise, though he froze when Roxy’s boot knife slid out of it’s sheath and she pressed her heel down on his chest, as though daring him to move. He looked… broken. Defeated. His right arm twitched for want of his lost hand, but his gaze was fixed on the ceiling, glassy and unseeing. 

“Thanks for the rescue,” Amaretto said. 

“My pleasure,” Roxy replied smoothly. 

“Is that my jetpack?” Eggsy demanded. 

Roxy deigned ignore him. “Now, then. I have an extraction team en route. If you’d care to join me in securing our friend here, we can get ourselves back home.” 

Amaretto marched across the room, pulling two lengths of zip chord from a pocket up her sleeve. Tequila hung back, staring at Jack, his face creased in deep lines and lips pursed. 

“All right, bruv?” Eggsy asked. 

“No,” Tequila replied, honestly. “He killed all our friends. Hell, would’a killed me, if I’d been there. Or if I’d gotten my hands on my stash before everything went to shit. I’m…” He shook his head. “It’s gonna take a bit before ‘all right’ is even in the picture.” 

Eggsy clapped his shoulder and they made their way to Roxy and Amaretto.

* * *

Harry had missed how entirely uncomfortable the chairs around the table were. Even if one gave into the urge to shift or—heaven forbid—slouch, there was no reprieve from the hard wooden seats. It made one’s arse quite numb in a remarkably short amount of time. And, despite the ache in his lower back which formed in seconds upon alighting oneself, it made something warm curl up satisfied in his chest with the familiarity of it all. 

Arthur’s attention returned to him time and time again with mild interest as they received the mission report from Galahad. It was such an agonizing relief to hear Eggsy’s voice, to know that he hadn’t died in the field with still so much hanging between them, that Harry found he could scarcely breathe. And while seeing Eggsy hale and well in what had once been Harry’s seat drew his attention away from the content of his words, there was no mistaking the rightness of it all. Galahad, continuing a proud tradition and fulfilling all the potential Harry had seen in him from the very first day. 

They still had much to talk about, he feared. But at least they would have the opportunity. 

He barely listened to the last of the debrief—they would drop the traitorous former Agent Whiskey at one of Kingsman’s secure imprisonment facilities before returning to London—and when they signed off, Arthur himself seemed to lose about six tonnes of weight from his shoulders. 

“Brandy?” he offered. 

“Excessive amounts, if you please,” Harry said. “But allow me.” 

He stood to decant a few glasses from the sideboard which, he noticed, was much more generously stocked than it had been under Chester King, and with finer offerings. He practically filled two glasses and passed one to Arthur with a brisk nod. When he glanced to Merlin, the other man shook his head. 

“I’ve confirmed that the cure has been delivered to all major centres of population,” Merlin said from his place across the room. “The number of casualties is still striking, however, and we’re receiving reports that the so-called ‘field hospitals’ set up by the American president were little more than living mass graves. He’ll have to be dealt with.” 

“I have a feeling he’ll have dug his own grave, if that’s true. If it seems he’ll get away without repercussion, get Gawain into the White House and have him ready in case further action is required. We’ve had our fair share of villains in the past year, we don’t want another with ready power to slip through.” Arthur sighed and downed half the brandy in a single swallow, fast enough that he likely barely tasted it. “Now, then, Harry—”

“I should very much like to return to the field as quickly as possible,” Harry interrupted, the words practically tripping over his tongue in their hurry to escape him. “I’m prepared to go through the rehabilitation training, of course, as well as any field readiness tests. With our Agent Galahad performing so flawlessly in the field, I should hate to take the title back, but I understand that there are currently several positions available at the table.”

“Return to the field my arse,” Arthur snapped. Harry blinked. “I was enjoying a very lazy and well-earned retirement when the call came in for me to step in as Arthur because this utter cumberworld refused to do it.” Merlin looked wholly unapologetic when Arthur waved wildly in his direction. “I have been led to believe that all of this has been a temporary measure for want of another senior agent to step in. Now that you're here I can go back to my child bride—” Kamala was eighty-five, if she was a day, and a full fifteen years older than Arthur—“and lazing about watching telly and drinking scotch.” He stuck out his hand, keeping deliberate and uncomfortable eye contact with Harry the whole while. “Congratulations.” 

Harry opened his mouth to protest when he noted Merlin shuffling papers about. “Merlin's already done up the paperwork, hasn't he?”

“I do as my king commands,” Merlin agreed with such blinding insincerity Harry wondered why he even bothered.

"Horseshit.” Arthur—well, Charles once again, Harry supposed—scowled. “Get your arse in this chair, Harry.” 

Harry took Charles’ hand in a firm shake and then uneasily shifted around to the head of the table. Arthur. Yes, he supposed he could make Arthur work. Less fieldwork, of course, and while he craved a decent fight there would be more than his fair share if he took up the title. 

Charles showed himself from the room, grumbling under his breath, and for the first time in longer than Harry cared to remember, he was well and truly alone with Merlin. No one listening in, no one around to casually observe their interactions, just the two of them and their years and years of history. 

“You must be relieved,” Harry finally said. “That Eggsy will be returning home to you.” 

Merlin shook his head. “Pathetic, Harry.” Harry frowned. “If that’s how you’re going to start things, I’m going to leave you here to stew and go update our servers.” 

A mindless task that Merlin had handed off to one of his drones a thousand times before, but one that took hours to complete if one weren’t in any great hurry. 

“Then how would you prefer I ‘start things’?” Harry asked. He felt his spine straighten to a nearly painful perfection, as it always did prior to him entering battle. He had little desire to fight with Merlin— _lies_ , his mind whispered, _he’d wanted to fight Merlin since Eggsy’s tearful farewell little over twelve hours prior_ —but it seemed that a fight was imminent. 

Merlin shook his head. “Twenty years and you can’t even bring yourself to have a real conversation with me?” He cursed. “I thought you dead and buried, Harry. I grieved you. I did. I’m not going to apologize for Eggsy.” He said Eggsy’s name as though it were a benediction. 

“I shouldn’t ask you to,” Harry said. “I suppose it was too much to hope, with so much time passing, that we might rebuild what we had.” 

“What you ended,” Merlin pointed out. 

“Oh, yes, what I ended,” Harry growled. “In case you’re angling for it, I’m not going to apologize for choosing Kingsman when Chester commanded it. Before him, the position of Arthur had changed over eight times in six years.” His hands twitched at his side. “I thought we could wait until someone with a lick of bloody sense took his place. How was I supposed to know he’d hold onto it for two bloody decades?” He ran a hand over his face and regretted it immediately when he bumped his glasses and was reminded of what his new glasses hid from the world.

Merlin’s mouth twisted into a grim line. “Why didn’t you say?” 

“I honestly thought you knew,” Harry said, defeated. How could he not have known? 

“And Eggsy?” Merlin asked, twisting the knife. Assuming he really had believed Harry had entirely put him aside for Kingsman, Harry supposed this last flick of the wrist was justified. “When Eggsy walks through that door tomorrow, are you really going to just stand there and pretend that there’s nothing between you but Arthur and Knight?” Harry barely twitched, but Merlin knew him. Oh, yes. Merlin knew him all too well. “That’s to be it, then? You suffer in silence while the two of us carry on? Or are you going to pull on some of Chester’s strategies and put him through another fucking dog test?” 

“Enough,” Harry ordered. “Go update your servers, but leave me in peace.” 

Merlin scoffed. “You’re not Arthur until you sign this declaration,” he said, tilting up his tablet. “I don’t have to do a damn thing you say.” 

“For fuck’s sake, Merlin,” Harry snapped. “What is it exactly you want from me? No, I don’t plan on interfering if you and Eggsy ‘carry on’ provided it’s not across my fucking desk. I never—” Merlin pinned him with a hard glare and Harry faltered. “I don’t have anything to say with regards to Agent Galahad. He’s proved to be an effective agent, and I’m pleased that my faith in him was well-founded.” Merlin kept staring, but Harry refused to be made uncomfortable and shift about in his seat as though he could be intimidated by the man’s gaze alone. “I will have words with him and reassure him again that his place in Kingsman isn’t in doubt.”

“‘His place in Kingsman,’” Merlin repeated. “You naffy fucking gowk.” He shook his head in disbelief. “All he’s done for a year is mourn you. And I’ve respected that, because if you were to be in our bed, I wanted you to actually be there instead of haunting us from the fucking corners.

“He’s not coming home to me, Harry. He’s coming home to _us_.”

Harry’s heart staggered in his chest, and for the second time that day he found himself robbed of breath. How was he supposed to react to that? His thoughts flew to the boy of whose skin he’d spent the past year inhabiting. That Harry—Henry John Crispin Nevill Drummond-Frankland-Hart III—would have tutted and scowled until the uncomfortable feelings being stirred within him vanished, and then would likely have called up his mother and chatted about linens. He wasn’t that Harry any longer. And yet he found himself similarly in want of avoidance tactics. 

How had he felt about Eggsy? Enraged, at the end, that all his hopes for the younger man had been so cruelly dashed. He would undoubtedly look for ways to make things up to him for years, if permitted, for how things had been left before he’d taken off for Kentucky. But that wasn’t all. Had never been all. He’d admired Eggsy’s spirit. His determination. His loyalty. And, yes, there had been shivers of attraction whenever Eggsy turned those wonderful, terrible and all together too-reverent eyes his way. But he couldn’t have fathomed what Merlin was suggesting. Perhaps because he’d spent so long waiting for Merlin that anything else was simply an impossibility, to be immediately discarded upon consideration.

Yet here was Merlin, the man he’d loved for almost half his lifetime, and been unable to have for just as long, standing before him and apparently in love with the same young man for whom Harry could finally admit his attraction and deep affection.

“Then…?” he managed to force out, the words almost painful to press through the tight squeeze of his jaw. 

“We’ve a great deal of work to do,” Merlin said. “Whether we help Statesman rebuild, or whether we recruit their few remaining agents. And there must be other members of Poppy’s Golden Circle who will need to be dealt with. But after…” He allowed for the minutest twitch of his lips; for anyone else, it would have been a grin brighter than a sunrise. “After.”

“After,” Harry agreed. There was more weight in the word than there had ever been before.

They let it hang between them, quiet and heavy. It seemed wrong, somehow, to make such sweeping promises without Eggsy there. But, then again, from the glint in Merlin’s eye, Harry had no doubt Eggsy was listening in. 

Merlin shoved the tablet in Harry’s direction, and with a swift twitch of a stylus, it was done. He was Arthur. Hopefully for at least the same tenure as Chester Bloody King. 

“You’ll still need to go through field proficiency tests,” Merlin said. “A year of soft living’s had it’s toll, after all.” 

“Sod off,” Harry replied with easy affection. “And tell him I expect him and Lancelot to come and see me directly once they’ve returned,” Harry said. 

Merlin nodded. “Aye.” 

With that, he left Harry to the table, the brandy, and a world of new beginnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel as though the romance is very Edwardian, in that there's a lot of talking, but not a lot of action. I'm so very sorry if you don't think there's enough payoff. I'm sort of kicking around ideas for a potential sequel, but I don't want to over-promise anything. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading. All kudos and comments are gratefully accepted.


End file.
